UK Phonics Screening Check

In the Uk, at the age of 6 and 7 years old Year 1 pupils are required to complete a Phonics screening check in which they are asked to read a series of 'real words' and 'nonsense words'. This test has received much scrutiny in the press;

'It has failed to improve national standards in reading in England. Instead, the phonics frenzy of testing and practising nonsense words that have accompanied the implementation of the test appears to be narrowing classroom practice and damaging literacy standards. (Mitsy Adinou, article - How the national phonics test is failing England and why it will fail Australia too, https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=2533).

My Experiences

In my experience of teaching in England, this test places an enormous amount of stress on both the children and the teacher. The success of schools and their teachers are judged on the children's ability to pass this test. Children who fail in Year 1 are then made to take the test again the following year. One of my main complaints about this test is its validity. What is it actually telling us? If a child has the phonetic skills to decode and read words whether they be nonsense or real, that's fantastic. However, surely the most important aspects of reading are the understanding and enjoyment, the ability to think and interpret what they have read rather than just reading words for reading's sake.

In opposition to my feelings an article in The Guardian entitled, 'Phonics screening test, Learning with objects and reading intervention' states; 'A study to look at the validity of the new phonics screening test, undertaken by year 1 pupils in England, has concluded that it is a valid but unnecessary test. The test does help identify school children who are falling behind with their reading but is not any more useful or informative than teacher assessments that have already been conducted.' (https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/jun/07/education-research-phonics-test-sen-learning-reading).

My class were 75% learners with English as an additional language, these children scored incredibly high on this test as they made good use of their Phonics as this one one of the only English reading skills they had. They had not yet built up a large vocabulary and many of them had only 100 or so words of spoken English. The British children in my class, however, scored rather poorly on the test as they read the nonsense words, repeated them and then tried to make a real word out of them. A key skill we teach young children in reading is to make sense of what they read. This is what they were doing and yet they were failing the test, or moreover, the test was failing them!

Conclusion

In my experience, primary school teachers listen to their children's use of Phonics every day through reading and writing activities. They have a detailed perception of where the children in their class are at and what types of texts they can read and interpret. They know the children who love to read, who hate to read, who read at home. A screening check shows us where children's limitations are in sound knowledge but only that. Reading is so much more than simply being able to decode words.

The Simple View of Reading

https://beaconsunique.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/simple-view-of-reading.png?w=535

Nonsense Words

Real Words

Taken from: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/715823/2018_phonics_pupils_materials_standard.pdf.pdf