Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op) I am grateful to
have the opportunity to discuss in the House the sound reading
system and describe its promise for improving literacy. The sound
reading system was developed in my constituency of Oxford East, and
it has shown remarkable results when it comes to enabling children
and adults to read, often for the first time. However, its
sustainability is in doubt, which is why I am so...Request free trial
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(Oxford East)
(Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to have the opportunity to discuss in the House
the sound reading system and describe its promise for
improving literacy. The sound reading system was developed in
my constituency of Oxford East, and it has shown remarkable
results when it comes to enabling children and adults to
read, often for the first time. However, its sustainability
is in doubt, which is why I am so grateful to the Minister
for lending her ear to this Adjournment debate.
There are still worrying levels of illiteracy in Britain and
worldwide. Because of the central position of English as a
lingua franca, difficulties with literacy in this country are
exported beyond our shores. Globally, one in five people
cannot read enough to understand a bus timetable or a recipe.
Literacy is not only a problem for developing countries: in
England, one in seven adults lack basic literacy skills.
Worryingly, the problem appears to be getting worse. A 2016
OECD report indicated that England is the only developed
country where late-middle-aged adults perform better in
literacy than young adults. In addition, the gap between the
highest and lowest-performing readers in England is stark,
and the eighth worst of the OECD countries.
I am sure we all know of friends or acquaintances who are
clever people but who, for whatever reason, never learned
properly to read and have gone to great lengths to try to
conceal that in adulthood. Illiteracy imposes a huge cost on
society; indeed, it has been estimated that low levels of
literacy cost the UK public purse £2.5 billion every year. Of
course, the most significant impact is on those who are not
fully literate. Language really is power, and those who
cannot read properly cannot participate properly in society.
It is therefore essential that we take every opportunity to
ensure that everyone gets the chance to learn to read and
that we do not squander chances to build literacy.
That is where the sound reading system comes in. Remarkably,
it has a 100% success rate. That’s right—100%. There are
surely very few educational interventions that have had such
a proven impact. Children and young people make, on average,
two years’ worth of gain in three to four months of tuition
under the sound reading system. That is enough catch-up to
get back on to the literacy track.
The sound reading system stems from a very simple insight:
that written language is confusing to those who are learning
how to read and write it. It then develops a straightforward,
logical system to ensure that learners are fully conversant
with all different variations of language sounds, what they
look like on paper and therefore how they can be written, at
every single stage of the learning journey.
That appears very obvious, but it actually contradicts how
phonics are often taught, which can lead to the phonic system
often causing confusion rather than illumination. Fiona
Nevola developed the sound reading system in Oxford with
Professor Diane McGuinness, Emeritus Professor of Psychology
at Florida University and author of much academic research
into reading. Fiona showed me the detailed progress that just
one child in Oxford had made with the sound reading system,
which highlighted how and why they had previously been
struggling at school. One very simple example is the
confusion that so many children, and indeed adults, have
between letters that look very similar—such as b, d and p.
Just that type of confusion often leads to labelling children
as having problems, rather than ensuring that these letters
and their sounds, in different contexts, are fully understood
and shifting too quickly on to other sounds. That can begin a
downward spiral for many children.
Current systems, whether they use un-contextualised sound
cards, memorising whole words, or exposing children to
reading texts without specific sounds having been taught and
understood already, go directly against the grain of how
human beings actually learn. It is for that and other reasons
that the philosopher Steven Pinker stated that McGuinness’s
work was “part of the solution” to that
“story of needless misery and waste”
that is modern illiteracy. Similarly, the Dyslexia-Specific
Learning Difficulties Trust calls the method “remarkable”.
As I mentioned, the success rate of the sound reading system
has been total because it builds understanding from the very
beginning and therefore it also works fast. It has been used
to teach people to read who were previously believed to be
unteachable in primary schools, prisons and community
education, in Scotland, England, Namibia and Israel. Teachers
who have been trained in the sound reading system have
testified to its enormous impact on their pupils’ reading and
writing abilities. After being trained in the approach, one
teacher with 20 years’ experience said:
“My practice has changed forever...In my experience the
strugglers complete other phonic programmes with significant
barriers because much of the code has not been adequately
revealed or mastered. I also believe that if the whole
alphabet code is not revealed, rote learning is inadvertently
encouraged. This programme ensures vital knowledge of the
code is fixed into memory and strugglers are taught effective
strategies to ensure success”.
Many parents have also noted the impact of the programme on
their children. One Oxford parent wrote last week that her
young son was now learning to read using the sound reading
system after having had many previous difficulties, which
included anxiety after finding that the phonics programme at
his school “didn’t make sense”. The sound reading system
programme has helped him immensely, his mother said. There
are many other testimonies that I could mention here, but I
will not owing to the pressure of time.
Despite the very strong success of the sound reading system,
its use is at risk of decline for one simple reason—it is not
commercial. Many of us will be aware of different approaches
to phonics, which rest on the sale of different materials.
Indeed, as a parent of young children, I have used some of
them myself. The founders of the sound reading system took a
totally different approach. They felt that pushing particular
materials would only lead to confusion if it were not backed
up with intensive training for the teachers who were going to
use these materials with learners. Despite the simplicity of
actually teaching the method, the attention to detail is
crucial. It is that detail, based on proven research, that
matters. The method cannot be fudged and combined with
opposite approaches.
Although hundreds of teachers have been trained in the sound
reading system, and continue to be trained in it, its
continuation rests pretty much on a shoestring. It is
supported only by a small trust. That trust, Our Right to
Read, was initially managed by Diane McGuinness and Fiona
Nevola, but it is now largely driven by Fiona Nevola, my
constituent.
There has been a lot of political support for the use of the
sound reading system. expressed interest in the
model when he met those involved in it. Insights from it
appear to have informed reviews of how to build literacy. For
example, I note that the Rose report, published in 2006,
states:
“It is no surprise to find that the main ingredients for
success in the teaching of beginner readers are: a well
trained teaching force; well designed, systematic programmes
of work that are implemented thoroughly”.
However, that commitment to systematic programmes has not
translated into practice in many British schools and other
educational settings, where a hotch-potch of different
approaches is often used, leading learners into confusion and
disillusionment. That disillusionment affects learners’
confidence and abilities, and holds many back into adulthood.
The parallels between the sound reading system and another
innovation—the daily mile—are striking. Both are inexpensive,
non-commercial innovations, both have extremely positive
outcomes and both are impelled through the enthusiasm of
their founders. But in both cases, although politicians have
expressed strong support, that has rarely been translated
into concrete action. That action now has to come from
central Government. In my experience—and, I am sure, the
experience of other Members in this Chamber—local authorities
often lack the tools and resources to ensure appropriate
training for teachers and the diffusion of innovation. Of
course, the system has become much more fragmented with the
development of academies, academy chains and so forth. We
need action from central Government to ensure that the
approach is disseminated. The sound reading system could have
a radical impact on British children’s ability to read and
write, but its dissemination and diffusion will not just
occur on the wind; it will happen only if it is backed up
with proper resources.
I understand that the letters and sounds programme was
developed by the Department for Education and Skills, and put
into all schools in 2007, but it is unclear exactly what the
future of this programme is and whether the Department
envisages properly supporting more encompassing programmes
such as the sound reading system to ensure that children have
the benefits of its much more holistic approach. I hope that
the Minister will inform us about the future of these phonic
approaches and will explain what we can do properly to back
the sound reading system—an impressive literacy programme
from Oxford—so that we can get to grips with eradicating the
scourge of illiteracy from our country. I thank her for
listening to my argument.
5.12 pm
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The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Anne
Milton)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate.
English—literacy, in particular—is an essential foundation
for success in education. I am very happy to lend my ear to
this critical subject. The hon. Lady rightly pointed out that
the literacy rates in this country are not as good as they
should be. I think that slightly less than 25% of adults have
the literacy skills of an 11-year-old or below. As the hon.
Lady said, it is important to consider the impact of that.
People who do not have literacy skills are excluded from so
much of the world around them. In fact, all the important
messages that we want to get to people about a huge number of
things, including health and jobs, are simply lost.
It is vital that children learn to read from an early age.
This is the key to understanding the rest of the curriculum.
Children who struggle with language at the age of five are
about six times less likely to reach the expected standard in
English at age 11 than children who had good language skills
at the age of five, and they are about 11 times less likely
to reach the expected standard in maths. For that reason, we
have strengthened the national curriculum to focus on
developing reading and writing ability and put phonics at its
heart. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister for
School Standards, who is passionate about this and has done
so much work and driven through so much change.
Phonics is an important approach to the teaching of reading
and some aspects of writing. It involves developing phonemic
awareness by connecting the sounds of spoken English with
letters or groups of letters. I am sure that the hon. Lady
knows much of this, but it is important to put it on the
record. Synthetic phonics taught in a systematic way is the
most effective method of teaching reading to all children.
Combined with a language-rich curriculum, synthetic phonics
has been shown to develop positive attitudes towards
literacy, which is so important for children. The national
curriculum requires the teaching of systematic phonics
alongside pupils developing a wide vocabulary, speaking and
listening competently and reading widely and often.
I think it is fair to say that since 2010, the Government
have turbo-charged the effective teaching of phonics. We have
placed it at the heart of the curriculum, and we introduced
the annual phonics screening check in 2012 for pupils at the
end of year 1. Pupils have been doing the 2018 check this
week. We provided £23.7 million of match funding for
resources and training for 14,000 schools between 2011 and
2013—the hon. Lady rightly pointed out the importance of
training teachers to do this—and we have incorporated phonics
into the teachers’ standards, which are the baseline
expectation for teachers’ professional practice.
In “Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential”, published in
December 2017, we set out our key ambitions for improving
social mobility, including closing the word gap in early
language and literacy. By the age of three, disadvantaged
children are on average already almost a full year and a half
behind those from a more affluent background in their early
language development. We have made a good start: by 2020 we
will be spending around £6 billion on free entitlements,
tax-free childcare and childcare support, which is more than
any previous Government.
We have already seen progress, with those labours coming to
fruition. For example, there is near universal take-up of the
15 hours for all three and four-year-olds; 71%—just short of
three quarters—of eligible two-year-olds now take up the
entitlement, up from 58% in 2015; 71% of children achieve a
good level of development, up from 60% in 2014; and we have
closed the gap between children in receipt of free school
meals and their peers by two percentage points since 2014.
This week, pupils across England will be taking the
light-touch phonics screening check, and we have used that
check to measure the improvement over time in pupils’ phonics
success. Since its introduction, the proportion of pupils
meeting the expected standard in the phonics screening check
at the end of year 1 has steadily increased, with 81% of
pupils meeting the expected standard in 2017, up from 58% in
2012. I am giving the hon. Lady a lot of figures, but I think
they are important because they show that progress is being
made. It has to be said that all this is delivered through
the very hard work of our good teachers.
An additional 154,000 children are on track to become fluent
readers. In 2017, the great majority—89%—of pupils who met
the expected standard in the phonics screening check at the
end of year 1 went on to reach the expected standard in
reading at the end of key stage 1. Getting those fundamentals
right at an early age is critical for progressing to reading
fluently and for pleasure, which is particularly important to
me. Reading well is a good indicator of success in later
life.
The results of the 2016 Progress in International Reading
Literacy Study—PIRLS—put the success of our increased
emphasis on phonics and our continued focus on raising
education standards on a global scale. England’s
nine-year-old pupils achieved their highest average score
since PIRLS began, and we rose up the rankings from joint
tenth in 2011 to joint eighth. That is to be commended. The
pupils who took part in the study are the first to be
assessed since Government education reforms in 2010 that saw
the introduction of the more rigorous, knowledge-rich primary
school curriculum introduced in 2014.
However, despite the very real and measurable progress, more
must be done and, backed by a £26.3 million investment, we
are creating a national network of 35 English hubs, and a
centre of excellence for literacy teaching to improve
literacy across England. It is up to schools to choose the
approach and programme that is right for them and their
pupils within this framework. I understand that the sound
reading system, the programme championed by the hon. Lady,
incorporates training alongside its teaching materials, as
she described so well. This is good, and indeed, a number of
the more widely used phonics programmes do this. A wide range
of commercial products is available, and schools should
choose the product that best meets their needs and those of
their pupils.
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I am grateful to the Minister for her very helpful remarks.
However, the point I was trying to make about the sound
reading system is precisely that it is not commercial. It
does not have the commercial firepower behind it that is
needed for its dissemination, yet it produces incredibly
strong results. What more can we do to promote not-for-profit
approaches, such as the sound reading system?
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There are a number of imaginative ways of promoting the
success of not-for-profit systems, and in holding this debate
the hon. Lady has taken one of the first steps. There are 650
Members in the House, and as I always say when talking about
apprenticeships and skills, those 650 people can spread good
practice and good work. Members of Parliament have good
access to their local schools—we all enjoy going into our
primary schools—so that is an opportunity to promote the sort
of products the hon. Lady is talking about.
As I was saying, there is wide range of commercial products,
but I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for School
Standards is very happy to meet the hon. Lady’s constituent
to discuss her phonics programme. I am sure he will be
extremely interested to do that. The Government have to be
careful not to endorse specific publishers or products, but
as long as this programme meets the core criteria, there will
be plenty of opportunities for the hon. Lady to promote its
benefits.
I mentioned earlier that we initially turbo-charged phonics
with over £23 million of funding between 2011 and 2013, but
let me add a word about resources. This tends to be rather
sterile ground, but it is important to say that a number of
initiatives are going on. We provide funding to make sure
that schools across England are supported to teach phonics.
In response to the 2015 screening check results, the
Government have since funded Ruth Miskin Training and the
University of Reading to deliver 36 events to share best
practice in the teaching of phonics.
The most recent roadshows—late last year and early this
year—were held in areas where the results in the phonics
screening check were low and in the 12 opportunity areas. The
roadshows incorporated practical observations of phonics
lessons, and the provision of theory and advice about how
best to organise, structure and approach teaching systematic
synthetic phonics most effectively. This is very important in
areas—the opportunity areas—where there are more children
from disadvantaged backgrounds, because if we do not get this
right at an early age, all we will do is embed the
inequalities we are seeing not only in schools, but in
communities, and which children take with them throughout the
rest of their lives.
In 2017, we funded nine phonics partnerships, where schools
excelling in systematic phonics teaching work with partner
schools to spread good practice. These funded partnerships
showed an improvement in nearly 80% of the schools that were
supported. We are currently inviting applications from
eligible schools for them to apply to lead phonics
partnerships for this financial year to support effective
phonics teaching in schools. We also plan to fund another 20
partnerships during this financial year.
In addition, funding for improving the teaching of phonics
has been made available through the teaching and leadership
innovation fund and the strategic school improvement fund.
Ruth Miskin Training, through a project worth £1 million, is
delivering a whole-school literacy professional development
programme to support systemic synthetic phonics teaching in
priority schools over the next three financial years.
To date, we have also funded a total of 17 strategic school
improvement fund projects that include phonics. These
projects have been awarded nearly £6 million in grant
funding. For example, since December 2017, the Excalibur
Teaching Schools Alliance has upskilled 22 teachers to become
specialist leaders of education in phonics who have been
matched to support 104 phonics champions in 52 schools. As a
result, it is expected that, by June 2019, 85% of reception
and year 1 children in the supported schools will achieve the
expected standard in phonics.
As I say, the Government do not endorse specific products. My
main responsibilities are apprenticeships and skills, and I
am also involved in the introduction of the T-levels. I have
seen a lot of young people who need to be given a second, a
third, sometimes a fourth, sometimes a fifth chance, and it
is not just young people; it is young and older adults for
whom school simply passed them by, in large part, in my view,
because they missed out on those critical early phases in
their education. It did not matter what history, geography or
science they were taught—if they could not understand, if
they did not have those basic literacy skills, everything
someone attempted to teach them thereafter was completely
lost.
For me, this is definitely about social mobility. Learning to
read and write is probably the best springboard from which to
launch a successful career and open up opportunities that
perhaps a person’s family and those living around them did
not have. My right hon. Friend the Minister for School
Standards is doing his bit at his end to make sure that in 16
years the Apprenticeships and Skills Minister—it is unlikely
I will still be in that position, but you never know—will
have a much easier job and will be able simply to pick up
these excellent young people who have achieved at school and
understand the world around them. I was previously Public
Health Minister, and I remember negotiating at the Health
Council of the European Union on front-of-pack food
labelling. We have an obesity problem in this country, and
all that information is utterly lost to far more adults than
it should be simply because they cannot read the information
on the pack in front of them.
In conclusion, our support for the effective teaching of
phonics in early-years settings and schools is based on a
firm body of evidence, and it is working, as is shown by the
phonics screening check and the PIRLS results, but there is
more work to be done. That is why we are setting up a
national network of English hubs supported by a new centre of
excellence. This will enable schools that need support to get
it in a way that works for them, complementing the national
funding I have described. Schools can work collaboratively,
sharing experience, knowledge and expertise with the support
of high-quality, evidence-based resources. That is key to
improving pupils’ literacy and enjoyment of reading across
the whole of their school careers, from early years into
adulthood.
Finally, I congratulate the hon. Lady on raising an issue
that possibly does not get as much attention as it should in
the House. The impact of being unable to read and write is
perhaps lost on many Members as we talk about the sort of
subjects we have discussed at length this week, but it is
critical if we want to make sure that, whoever you are,
whatever your background, wherever you come from, wherever
you were born, whoever you know, you have the same
opportunities in life as those of us who have possibly been
more privileged.
Question put and agreed to.
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