Commenting on UCL’s paper about the government’s approach to the
teaching of reading, Julie McCulloch, Director of Policy at the
Association of School and College Leaders, said:
“We welcome this research from UCL as part of the ongoing
discussion about how best to teach children to read, which is
obviously of vital importance to their future education and life
chances.
“There is clear evidence that synthetic phonics provides a strong
foundation to help children to learn to read. But it is important
that this is combined with approaches which help children to
appreciate stories and develop a love of reading. In practice,
schools are well aware of this and work very hard to take an
approach to teaching which employs the use of phonics but
supports this with a range of other approaches too.
“We would certainly like to see a reduction in statutory primary
assessments because there are currently too many. However, the
phonics check is a relatively short assessment which gives a
useful snapshot at an important early stage, so we would favour
looking at reducing other assessment rather than this one.
“What we would most like to see is more focus from the government
on early years education so that all children are able to start
school with the building blocks in place that help them to become
confident readers.”
