Does anyone seriously expect a child to enjoy reading if they cannot read properly?
The big question we need to be asking ourselves when speculating why the number of children reading for pleasure is in freefall, and this month reached a new record low, is why, in 2024, in the home of the English language, so many children in England are unable to reach a basic standard of reading competency?
Does anyone seriously expect a child to enjoy reading if they cannot read properly?
2024 Reading Competency Crisis
In 2024 only 74% of eleven year olds met the minimum standard of reading competence, per UK Department of Education figures. That is to say, 26 out of every 100 kids, in the home of the English language, failed to reach that minimum standard of proficiency in English and start secondary school at a huge disadvantage.
The Impact of Reading Standards on Children
Per the UK govt. website, “In reading, 74% of pupils reached the expected standard in 2024, up from 73% in 2023. This figure has fluctuated between 72% and 75% since 2017“.
The report continues, “In all of reading, writing and maths (combined), 61% of pupils met the expected standard, up from 60% in 2023.”
In other words, 39 out of every 100 kids failed to meet the minimum expectation.
Debunking the Pandemic Excuse
No, we can’t blame the pandemic. In 2022 when assessment resumed after the 2020-21 Pandemic interregnum, reading results were UP to 2018 levels, at 75%, compared to 73% in 2019 before the Pandemic.
That’s worth a post all on its own. Being away from the classroom boosted reading stats! When the kids got back in the classroom, the numbers started falling again. Does anyone see a connection here?
The Startling Reality of Reading Competency
Returning to the latest 2024 figures, these are “provisional” pending an update probably next month, but the finalised 2023 results are instructive:
In 2023, per Depart of Education official figures, only 74% of eleven year olds met the low bar that is “the expected standard in reading.” For the mathematically challenged, that means 26 out` of every 100 kids started secondary school unable to read at even a basic level.
For kids who attained the higher standard (for combined reading, writing and maths) that pass rate fell to just 8%, meaning 92 out of every 100 kids failed to meet the higher rate.
The Decline in Reading for Pleasure
This is critical.
It’s from that tiny 8% that the majority of kids who do read for pleasure will be found. After all, if you cannot make sense of simple sentences, you are not going to enjoy reading, and it will be just another test-passing chore you do at school because those nasty adults make you. The last thing you are going to do is pick up a book at home for fun.
For the record, the latest depressing statistic, per the National Literacy Trust, is that only 34.6% of kids read for pleasure.
The Blame Game
The industry panic-brigade are rushing about blaming the pandemic, climate change, bad parenting, underfunded libraries, the Russians, Elon Musk, sunspots, Bigfoot, ebooks, Spotify, AI or anything else they think can be used as a soundbite excuse and so avoid actually identifying the real problem.
Yes, parents can help children to read more at home, and it’s great when they do. The benefits to the child are immeasurable. But wearing my teacher’s hat I have to say, homework should be optional, and blaming parents because the school is not doing its job is totally unacceptable.
Parents pay, directly or through taxes, for their children to be educated at school. That’s what school is for. Imagine going to a restaurant and the chef hands you some vegetables and says take them home and cook them yourself.
Instead of shaming parents that do not read to or with their kids, ask why that it so. The parents who are not reading to, or with, their kids today are the pupils of yesteryear that were not taught effectively in class. Don’t blame the parents because the education system let them down too.
Does anyone expect the quarter of kids in England unable to read today are going to read with their own children when they are parents?
Debunking the School Libraries Excuse
Okay, so one in seven schools do not have a school library. Does that 14% explain why so many kids have suddenly stopped reading for pleasure? Obviously not, because if 14% of schools do not have libraries then that means 86% of schools do have libraries.
Yet reading for pleasure in 2024 is at an all time low, at 34.6%.
The History of Kids Reading for Pleasure
And here’s the thing. Kids haven’t suddenly stopped reading for pleasure.
Yes, 34.6% is an abysmal number, meaning 65.4% of kids do not read for pleasure in 2024.
But fourteen years ago, back in 2010 it was only 58.6%, per the National Literacy Trust.
In 2016 it was just about holding steady at a still disappointing 58.6%.
By 2019, before the pandemic excuse came along, it was down to 53%.
In 2020, it was 47.8% and that ls where it stayed in 2022 when post-pandemic stats were resumed.
By 2023 it was down to 43.4%, and this year fell to the aforementioned 34.6%.
If we head back to when records began, in 2005, even then it was only 67%, and at its peak only 71% in 2011.
So while the latest numbers are depressing, they follow a pretty clear patter of decline that was only marginally impacted by the pandemic, and therefore we can immediately eliminate that excuse from our inquiry.
So it’s not the pandemic after all, and no question publishers are churning out high quality children’s literature day after day, so let’s not blame the publishers. And while yes, school and public libraries are underfunded, there is no stand-out feature here to explain why reading for pleasure among children is in freefall, and that it gets worse each year.
What’s Going Wrong in the Classroom?
Or rather, there is no stand-out feature if we stubbornly refuse to look at what is happening in the classroom, in case we don’t like what we will find.
So let’s ask the obvious question: did teaching children to read change in any way in schools in England since 2005, that could cause reading for pleasure to peak in 2011 at 71%, and then, with the pandemic still in the distant future, steadily decline since?
The reality is, yes, something did happen in the schools. All the schools. Which means it was an approved intervention, a new policy, a new way of teaching English, not a handful of maverick or incompetent teachers not knowing what they were doing.
Say hello to synthetic phonics, and its main commercial proponent, Jolly Phonics, our industry’s ticking time bomb.
I touched on this almost a year ago, and things have only gotten worse since then.
Synthetic Phonics: A Closer Look
To be clear, phonics isn’t new. But what was new was a government policy that stressed phonics at the expense of other approaches teaching children to read, that played right into the hands of commercial companies like Jolly Phonics, that have a vested interest in only their own synthetic phonics resources being bought by the taxpayer.
First, a broad overview:
There are various phonics methodologies, and a safe bet that 99% of people reading this post were taught to read through a balanced approach that took the best of analytical phonics and merged with other proven reading techniques.
The Role of Jolly Phonics in Reading Decline
But when synthetic phonics came along as the only approved way of teaching English (and let’s be absolutely clear that the govt. has formally ruled against using traditional teaching methods alongside), it brought with it the insidious phonics diagnostics tests designed solely to test how well children could “decode” simple two and three letter words such as ‘an’ and ‘on’ and ‘cat’ and ‘dog’, and ‘ruk’ and ‘mun’ and ‘giz’ and ‘dop’.
Oops, sorry. I appear to have thrown some nonsense words in there by mistake.
The Issue with Nonsense Words in Phonics
Except, no mistake. These nonsense words, also variously called non-words, pseudo-words or alien words, are part and parcel of phonics teaching.
Believe it! One of the single most outstandingly stupid-beyond-belief elements of Jolly Phonics is teaching children to read words that do not exist.
This is an example of a phonics nonsense words test sheet. Seriously, I’m not making this up!
So instead of learning to read English, little children are wasting their most precious years learning to read words that do not actually exist, that have no meaning whatsoever, and serve only to help pass a nonsensical phonics diagnostics test that shows the children have learned one possible sound of a given letter.
The Need for a Balanced Approach to Reading Education
More on that below. Here just to say, the letter ‘a’ has nine different ways it can be pronounced. The letters ‘o’ and ‘i’ can be pronounced ten different ways. The letters ‘e’ and ‘u’ eleven. Even the letters ‘s’, ‘t’ and ‘y’ each have five possible ways to be pronounced.
So these nonsense words, where the child proves they have mastered the five short vowel sounds, is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
Phonics: The Focus on Sounds
As for words that do exist, the “familiar word reading” test has children trying to read a list of 50 one-syllable (2-3 letters) familiar words selected from early grade reading materials.
The term “familiar” is key here. The children have already memorised these words through constant repetition under the guise of phonemic awareness and blending. These are not new words. Nor are they in any way difficult. These are two and three letter words that follow a strict phonemic pattern.
/ɪ/ /n/ – in
/æ/ /n/ – an
/k/ /æ/ /t/ – cat
/d/ /ɒ/ /ɡ/ – dog
/m/ /æ/ /t/ – mat
The examples above use the International Phonetic Alphabet, where each symbol accurately describes the sound. Using the IPA, any student can correctly read aloud any word. But Jolly Phonics confuses the children by telling them, for example, that the letter ‘a’ makes the /æ/ sound like the ‘a’ in ‘cat’, when in fact the letter ‘a’ makes nine different sounds and can also be silent, as we’ll explore below.
The Pitfalls of Phonemic Awareness
And that’s the problem. Phonics is about sounds. Reading letters by sound. One phonics teacher told me it was impossible to read without sounds. And all phonics advocates will tell you we have to sound out the “phonemes”, the individual sounds of the English language, in order to read. Utter nonsense that rather overlooks the fact that deaf people can read.
Yes, knowing letter sounds can be useful, but it doesn’t need to be where reading starts, and actually isn’t where reading starts. Because reading involves understanding. Comprehension of text. And that is the very last thing in the list of priorities when teaching children to read using synthetic phonics, as is made plain by forcing children to read words that do not exist.
This concept is called Phonemic Awareness, and is what phonics diagnostics tests are all about, and what government-paid teachers are instructed to focus on instead of teaching children to read properly.
Teachers Perspectives of Phonics
Ask any experienced independent ECD or Primary teacher what they think of phonics and the answer is likely to be that it confuses children. Even teachers who see benefits in the first year of teaching, where two and three letter words are the focus, will tell you that many children then cannot advance to “proper” reading once we remove the specially-written decodable texts.
Let’s look at why that is the case.
The Issue with Phonics Diagnostics Tests
The first test of Phonemic Awareness is the “identification task” where children tell the teacher the number of sounds in a spoken word. The word “cat”, for example, is one syllable, but has three phonemes, which coincidentally is also the synthetic sound of the three letters. The three phonemes are: /k/ /æ/ /t/. (Again, the symbols there are from the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is the correct way to teach phonics.) Each of these phonemes corresponds to a single sound in the word.
The test involves the children decoding words and telling the bored-to-tears teacher how many phonemes – sounds – are in the word. Teacher, there are three sounds in the word ‘cat’: /k/, /æ/ and /t/, and in the word ‘at’ there are two sounds: /æ/ and /t/.
So after two years, yes, the children could sail through the phonics diagnostics tests, decoding simple words like ‘cat’ and ‘mat’ and ‘on’ and ‘in’ (but as we shall see below, not words like ‘no’, or ‘go’, or ‘to’ or ‘has’ and certainly not ‘the’, ‘have’ or ‘school’ or ‘pencil’).
The Problem with Decodable Texts
I mentioned above the specially-written decodable texts, and this is where we find one of the biggest cons in the Jolly Phonics tool box.
Try reading “The approaching thunderstorm will be fun.”
As accomplished adult readers, we know automatically that the ‘th’ in ‘there’ is not the same as the ‘th’ in thunderstorm, and that the ‘th’ in thunder is not the same sound as the ‘f’ in ‘fun.
If anyone is not clear on that, try saying each word out loud and think about where the sound is produced. The ‘th’ (/ð/) in ‘the’ (/ðə/) is a “voiced” sound formed by vibrating the vocal cords. The ‘th’ (/θ/) in ‘thunder’ (/ˈθʌndər/) and the ‘f’ (/f/) in ‘fun’ (/fʌn/) are “voiceless sounds” formed in the mouth, but they are not the same sounds.
The Misleading Nature of Phonics Instruction
To help the kids cheat their way through the phonics diagnostics test, the children will be shown a specially-written text that will read something like this: “there is a thunderstorm nearby”, where the pronunciations of the digraphs ‘th’ are shown with either a regular or a bold font, so “there is a thunderstorm nearby”.
Jolly Phonics plays the same con trick with the digraph ‘oo’. How, for example, do you teach a child that the digraph ‘oo’ is pronounced differently in the words ‘book’ and ‘boot’?
The Use of False Fonts in Phonics Instruction
Easy. You just use differentiating fonts, so ‘book’ and ‘boot.
Which of course means when the child sees the word ‘blood’ or ‘door’ they cannot read those words and have to learn them as “tricky words.” But how does the child know when a word is a tricky word and when it is not?
Never mind that no ‘real’ book prints words in that way. This is all about the child memorising the words during phonics class without actually admitting it is “look-say” memorisation, which is anathema to phonics advocates paid to support synthetic-phonics-only teaching.
How else do we differentiate between ‘book’, ‘boot’, ‘blood’ and ‘door’, never mind cooperate or brooch?
Misleading Children Starts On Day One
So the children start off with simple two and three letter phonetic words, but even here the phonics con is on. The first words taught in Jolly Phonics are two and three letter words made up of the letters S. A. T. P. I and N.
Examples include sat, pin, pan, sit, on, pot, an and is. Except, the word ‘is’ is the first cheat in the Jolly Phonics playbook. It has to be. How many simple sentences can you make without the word ‘is’? So the children need to say ‘is’. But ‘is’ breaks the first Jolly Phonics rule.
Here’s the problem: The letter ‘s’, teachers are compelled to teach the children, is pronounced like the ‘s’ (/s/) in ‘snake, so the children run about saying ‘iss’, rhyming with ‘hiss’ (/hɪs/) rather than ‘is’ (/ɪz/) rhyming with ‘whiz’. The teacher cannot correct them, else the children will be saying ‘zat’ for sat and ‘zit’ for sit or ‘znake’ for snake.
Likewise, children are told the letter ‘o’ is pronounced like the ‘o’ in ‘on’, the letter ‘i’ is pronounced like the ‘i’ in ‘tin’, the letter ‘e’ is pronounced like the ‘e’ in ‘egg’ and the letter ‘u’ like the ‘u’ in ‘umbrella.’
The Challenge of Tricky Words
It all seems so simple! Until the child wants to read the word ‘to’, or ‘go’, or ‘do’, or ‘no’, or ‘uniform’ or ‘eyes’ or ‘the’ or even the first person singular pronoun ‘I’.
These words, even ‘I’, the children are told, are “tricky words.”
Of course, there absolutely are tricky words in English. Imagine encountering for the first time, with no idea what they mean, the words ‘laughter’ and ‘daughter’. Or ‘height’ and ‘weight’. Or ‘through’ and ‘thorough’ and ‘though’ and ‘thought.’ Or orange, or women, or many, or water.
But ‘no’, ‘to’, me’ ‘he’ and ‘I’? They are only tricky because Jolly Phonics doesn’t work very well.
The Limitations of Jolly Phonics
Using analytical phonics family groups (‘he’, ‘we’, ‘she’, be’, ‘me, ‘see’, ‘tree’) as part of a balanced top-down reading methodology where words are read in context makes these words easy.
But Jolly Phonics is a commercial synthetic phonics programme that has the sole purpose of making money for the company. It is in the company’s interests to narrow the focus to only synthetic phonics strategies. And with stupidity that beggars belief, the government officially endorsed this narrow focus, making clear teachers are not allowed to use other method alongside the Jolly Phonics craziness.
The Importance of Context in Reading
Try reading the words “read” in these sentence only using sound.
“Would you like to read this book tomorrow?“
“No thank you. I have already read it.”
Yet context and comprehension are the very final stages in teaching synthetic phonics.
Here’s a brief overview of the key negatives that an obsession with phonics brings to the table:
- Learning phonics prevents children from reading real books.
- Phonics doesn’t help reading comprehension.
- The “Drill and Skill” in phonics puts kids off reading.
- Most children don’t need phonics instruction.
- Phonics is of little use because there are too many irregular words in English.
- One size doesn’t fit all: children have different learning styles.
- There’s more to reading than decoding.
Phonics Diagnostics Tests Do Not Prove Phonics Works
But who cares that a quarter of children are leaving primary school unable to read properly? Not Jolly Phonics, clearly. They are making money from keeping the narrow focus.
Who cares that only a third of children now read for pleasure? That’s not Jolly Phonics’ problem.
Rather, phonics advocates will tell us phonics diagnostics tests are rising! The system works! Jolly Phonics is a success! If children can’t actually read after six years of primary school and three years of infants/kindergarten, blame the stupid, lazy, uncaring parents that are refusing to do the teachers’ jobs for them.
Sucking the Joy Out Of Reading
Could it be that teachers in England are now so busy teaching children to pass phonics diagnostics tests that they don’t actually have the time or opportunity to teach children to read properly? And could it be the children are having all the joy of reading sucked out of them by this mindless apology for a teaching strategy?
But who cares whether the children can actually read, so long as the kids can “decode” a sentence like “a fat cat sat on a mat in a hat” and pass the all-important phonics diagnostic test?
The Misleading Songs of Jolly Phonics
Who cares that the Jolly Phonics songs are contradictory, nonsensical and insulting to the child’s intelligence?
Take this example of Jolly Phonics lunacy: the children are told categorically by the teacher that the letter ‘a’ is pronounced as the short vowel sound like the ‘a’ in apple (/æ/). Then they have to learn this beyond stupid song where the letter ‘a’ features in FIVE different words, but only in ONE of those words is the letter ‘a’ sound like the ‘a’ in apple (/æ/).
“Ants, ants, ants on my arm.
Ants, ants, ants on my arm.
Ants, ants, ants on my arm.
Are causing me alarm.”
You see the problem here. Little children, who look up to their teachers and expect the teachers to be truthful, are falsely told by said teachers that the letter ‘a’ must be pronounced a certain way, and then the kids try to decode words and feel humiliated and disheartened when they get word after word after word wrong by doing exactly what the teacher told them.
The Problem with Phonics Instruction
Try pronouncing any of these words using the short vowel ‘a’ (/æ/) sound.
Ape. Agent. Table. Are. Car. Father. Ware. Care. Dare. Air. Hair. Chair. Farm. Palm. Flaky. Bake, Make. Cake. War. Warm. Orange. Woman. Awe. Awa. All. Walk. Talk. Chalk. Ball. Bail. Fail. Aunt. Taunt. Load. Read. Bread. Island. Banana. What. Water. Prepare. Half. Rather. Any. Many. Draught. Daughter. Laughter.
In none of these words does the letter ‘a’ have the short vowel sound we hear in “apple” and “cat”. And in fact there are nine different ways of pronouncing the letter ‘a’, quite apart from the huge number of words where the ‘a’ is silent, such as aisle, heart, wear, breakfast, beak, goat, boat, read (present tense), read (past tense),etc.
The Inconsistency in English Orthography
In the technical jargon, while a language like Spanish or Finnish has Shallow Orthography or Transparent Orthography (also called Simple Orthography or Phonemic Orthography), meaning there’s a close correspondence between letters and sounds, English has a Deep Orthography (also called Opaque Orthography, Non-Phonemic Orthography or Complex Orthography), meaning, as we are seeing clearly in the examples above, the relationship between letters and sounds is far, far less consistent, with so many exceptions and irregularities that obsessively narrow synthetic phonics teaching cannot possibly deliver on.
To be clear: Jolly Phonics is an insidious, ineffective and discredited (see below) commercial reading programme that is teaching little children how to pass self-serving diagnostic tests instead of learning to read properly.
And that’s not just my opinion.
The Landmark University College London Report
The University College London 2022 landmark report, led by Professors Dominic Wyse and Alice Bradbury, critically examined the current phonics teaching approach in England and its impact on children’s reading abilities. Here are some key points and quotes from the report:
- Uninformed Policy: The report states that the government’s approach to teaching reading is uninformed and not backed by the latest robust evidence.
- Narrow Focus: The current policy emphasises synthetic phonics to the exclusion of other important aspects of reading.
- Teacher Survey: A survey of over 2,000 primary school teachers revealed that 66% felt synthetic phonics was emphasised first and foremost in their teaching.
Two pertinent quotes from the report:
- Professor Dominic Wyse: “Teaching children to read and to make sense of texts is crucial to improving their life chances and is one of the most important tasks of primary schools and early years settings. Although there are some strengths to England’s current approach to teaching reading, our new research shows that the government’s policy is uninformed because it is not underpinned by the latest robust evidence.”
- Professor Alice Bradbury: “Our new research shows that synthetic phonics alone is not the best way to teach children to read. We found that a more effective method is to combine phonics teaching with whole texts, meaning that children learn to read by using books as well as learning phonics.“
Since that report, thousands of private schools in the UK stopped using Jolly Phonics, although it is still official government policy for government schools. Reading for pleasure is in freefall. Reading standards are in freefall.
When Professors Wyse and Bradbury said phonics was harming children, they were not joking.
Safe to say no minister in government today, nor any successful businessman or other well-educated person, nor any avid reader or anyone reading this post, was taught to read using Jolly Phonics.
And that says it all.
This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsletter.
