The Phonics Screening Test Debate

The first Phonics Screening Test results have been issued.

When the Department of Education announced the introduction of these tests back in December 2011 we had a debate on this blog about the usefulness of the test.  My concern was, and still is, that the results of the test will be used to measure children's ability rather than the purpose for which the tests are intended, which is to measure what 'method' of reading they are using in order to check if the teachers are teaching in the way the Department of Education would prefer them too.

The difficulties in interpreting this test include the following issues:

1. The teacher may be teaching reading using phonics but a child may be exceptionally good at reading and is reading many words by sight, only to be thrown by the phonics test and score poorly on it.
2. The teacher may not be using phonics as the main method of teaching, but may be having great success with other methods or a combination of methods.  Their class's phonics test results will be poor, but their class may be brilliant at actually reading.
3. Many words cannot be decoded using phonics. Our language isn't 'neat' enough.
4. And my main problem, which is that the Press and Media will use the results of the test to show how well our children are doing or not doing at reading, when actually the test check's method, not success.

The debate was reignited last week, when children came home with slips of paper detailing their results.  This thread on Mumsnet raged for 336 posts, with mums querying when they should worry, what they could do to help if the phonics score was low and asking how the test worked.  Children's author, Micheal Rosen, joined the discussion in his blog post here, and pointed out that phonics alone wouldn't help children read for pleasure.

Our daughter got 37/40. The expected level they are aiming for is 32/40, so I was happy.  But then realised I had no need to be 'happy' per se, as it hadn't tested her reading ability, just what method she primarily used to read.

This goes against my management style.  In the office I prefer to ask staff to produce a piece of work and I leave it up to them to decide what 'method' they will use to do it.  If the work is completed effectively and on time, then the 'method' isn't particularly important to me.

Here the powers-that-be are defining the 'method' that the teachers use.  It's one job where they persistently seem to be afraid to let the teachers just 'teach'.  Each teacher is different.  Each will have success with different methods.  Each child is different and will require a teacher who is adaptable and emphatic to best succeed.

Please can we stop testing whether teachers are 'doing what they are told' and simply let them teach?  The results will speak for themselves.*

*Assuming the SATs and GCSEs are appropriately set and test real knowledge and not just the ability to churn out facts the child doesn't understand of course!

Che-re-is-te-me-as: Why Phonetics can only take you so far.....

"Two-thirds fail new primary phonics reading check" announced the BBC yesterday in response to the publication of the results of the pilots of the new phonetics screening check for 6 year olds that the Department of Education officially announced the introduction of yesterday.

The BBC pointed out that 32% of pupils taking the test failed it, and went on to express the view of the General Secretary of the National Society of Headteachers, Russell Hobby, who said that "large numbers of teachers who used the test during the pilot found it...less useful than their existing means of diagnosing early reading ability."

I was upset by my initial reading of the story, as I couldn't make sense of the statistics as the BBC went on to say that the test results were inconsistent with the results of national curriculum tests which show that 8 out of 10 children in England routinely meet the levels expected of them at age seven and eleven.

I studied statistics at school, at university, and as part of my chartered accountancy qualification.  I know how statistics work and how easy they are to manipulate.  But because I am particularly interested in teaching my children to read well, I thought I'd delve deeper in to this story to understand the discrepancy.

It turns out that it's pretty simple.  The new test only tests the 'method' the child is using to decode words.  It tests whether the prescribed 'phonetics' system is being used.  It includes non-words, to ensure that the children  literally read sound-by-sound the word in front of them regardless of whether the result is a word they recognise or not.

Of course you will get inconsistencies in results.  Because straight away you could have children that will 'fail' to decode non-words using this system.  That can read perfectly fluently and enjoy stories, but are confused and thrown by these words that they have never seen being presented out of context.

So as a tool to check if the 'system' is being used, then it will probably give correct results.  But to use the new screening test as a tool to present children's ability to 'read', that would be a mistake and would provide unhelpful results.

All children learn in different ways*.  Learning in context is really important.  My daughter will get stuck on a word, and her method for decoding it is to continue reading the sentence.  She'll get to the end of the sentence, and based on the context of the story and the letters she can see in the problematic word, she can 'work it out'.

Assuming that 'just' phonetics will create better readings is a blinkered, naive, potentially dangerous view.  People are not all the same.  People do not learn the same.  One 'method' will work for some and not for all.  Learning methods should be tailored to the individual child, not enforced on all.

Besides, using phonetics alone, without context, would give a very strange version of the word "Christmas" now wouldn't it?

The BBC News report can be found here.
The Department of Education website detailing the introduction of the new test and the associated materials are here. 

*I learn through visualisation, meaning that even now, in my late thirties, I still picture a chocolate cake in my head when I'm doing fractions so I can 'see' the fractions and percentages involved.  (Being an accountant, that probably explains my almost constant chocolate cravings at work!)  My husband tends to learn 'rote', that is, you tell him something and it sticks.  He doesn't necessarily need to work it out again in future instances, he just 'knows' it.  A big difference between us is memory function.  My visualisation technique works fine and enables me to work out things through logical steps, seeing the results.  That is until I am asked to do mental arithmetic that requires breaking down the workings in to more than say five chunks, because my short term memory is so shockingly bad, I will have forgotten what answer I got to the first chunk by the time I get to the last chunk.  And so I have to write a lot of things down.  Step by step.  That's me.