‘Myths and Deception’, the Australian Phonics Screening Check: a response to Dr Paul Gardner

It is ironic that Dr Paul Gardner should use the title ‘Myths and Deception’ for his recent article on phonics which, as we’ve sadly come to expect, is replete with myths and deceptions (or ignorance) on his part.

Dr Gardner apparently accepts the need for ‘phonics’. What he appears to reject however, is the need for the early systematic teaching of synthetic phonics as the only approach to teaching decoding. I have explained the need for systematic synthetic phonics in another blog (here) but the essentials are this. If instead of adopting an SSP approach you teach phonics in a more haphazard, take it or leave it way i.e. as a choice among methods, it is exactly the children who most need it who will leave it. If given the option, vulnerable readers will choose guessing from pictures and context because for them that is easier than decoding (with which they struggle) and in the early stages, when reading predictive texts with illustrations, guessing seems to them to achieve the same result. (You can read why guessing is not a helpful strategy here).

Dr Gardener’s full post is available here however, I have included a substantial number of quotes below with my comments underneath:

The Check consists of 40 individual words, half of which are nonsense words. Year 1 students must read 32 of the words correctly in order to pass the test, which the UK Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, claims to be an effective means of assessing students’ reading potential.

The Phonics Screening Check is just that, a diagnostic check. Its function is to identify those children who may need further support with phonics if they are to reach their full reading potential. It is disingenuous to paint it as otherwise. Minister Tehan is trying to introduce a free, early screening check to try avoid future reading failure.

According to research undertaken by academics in England, both the Minister’s claims are contested by teachers, parents and literacy experts. The contradiction between systematic research, and the Minister’s opinion, indicates a serious schism in the English education system. So, why does Minister Tehan think the PSC will work in Australia, and does he not risk causing a similar conflict here?

Firstly, there is already considerable conflict and disquiet in Australia. Parents, dyslexia advocates, leading academics, and many, many teachers have all had enough of a status quo that consistently deprives large numbers of Australian children of their educational rights. They reject the blaming of parents and children and demand that their children be taught to read.

Secondly, as Dr Gardner has failed to cite the research that purportedly contradicts what he dismisses as the ‘Minister’s opinion’, I am left with no option but to guess what it might be. I know for certain that it isn’t any research on the most effective ways to teach reading, which means it must be the ‘research’ alluded to in the first line. This ‘research’ doesn’t actually conclude that Gibb’s understanding of the research on teaching reading is wrong, the opinion gathering ‘research’ Dr G appears to refer to in fact, merely concludes that there are some people who disagree with him.  Just as similar opinion gathering research might conclude there are a few people left who insist that the earth is flat.

Phonics involves teaching children letter sound relationships to help them to decode words. This is a universally accepted practice amongst teachers and literacy experts in both England and Australia.

Delighted to see this accepted by Dr Gardner. Surely it is then incumbent on all to teach this as well and as effectively as possible?

Phonics is embedded in the Australian National Curriculum and has been a common method of teaching early reading in schools for decades. The longevity of phonics teaching, and its universal acceptance amongst educators, has been turned into controversy by ‘agent provocateurs’, who claim the opposite to be true.

Dr Gardner is being economical with the facts here. Including some phonics in a mix of methods is indeed very common. No one disputes that because that is the problem. If you wish all children to have the very best chance of learning to read well then you need to improve your phonics provision and systematically teach synthetic phonics as the only strategy for decoding/word identification. Thinking of phonics as one of a number of ‘methods’ belies a deep misunderstand of the nature of written English and what it takes to become a competent reader. (This is explored in more depth in this blog).

In both England and, increasingly, in Australia, a small group of people with vested interests has systematically used national media to construct a myth, claiming that teachers and teacher educators have failed to teach children to read adequately because they do not know how to teach phonics. These ‘agent provocateurs’ have a vested interest in promoting a specific form of phonics, known as synthetic phonics.

A disingenuous straw-man argument that conveniently ignores the fact that it is the education academics who have literally built careers on promoting so called balanced literacy and on opposing systematic synthetic phonics who have the most “vested interests” of all. Greg Ashman wrote on the spurious nature of this sort of attack recently.

In many words that have a consonant, vowel, consonant, pattern (CVC) – such as: cat, dog, hot – this can be a relatively simple process. And for phonetic languages where there is a one-to-one correspondence between each alphabetic letter and the sound that maps onto the letter, synthetic phonics is an effective means of teaching decoding, but English is not a phonetic language, and many single letters can have multiple sounds.

The most glaring and astonishing inaccuracy so far, but, just in case you too haven’t heard…*BREAKING NEWS KLAXON*…word just in from every piece of actual research into the workings of written English over the last 40 or 50 years: written English, like all its relatives, is a ‘phonetic’ language.  It has a deeper, more complex orthography (sound-spelling system) than languages such as Finnish however this means that it is MORE crucial, not less, that reading, and spelling English is taught explicitly and systematically from the beginning.

Equally, single sounds can be represented by several graphemes, for example: gh, ph, f, ff. English also has unsounded letters in some words, such as ‘doubt’, ‘yacht’, and ‘ghastly’, and it is not possible to correctly read ‘bow’, or ‘read’, unless the word is in context.

Yes, positional and semantic context will help children decide which phoneme is represented by each grapheme they decode. This is literally 4 year-old-child’s play when taught well.

Whilst synthetic phonics is a useful strategy to teach early reading, it must be complemented by other strategies; a fact teachers and teacher educators have known for decades.

And the result of these decades of teaching? Thousands upon thousands of children left functionally illiterate, emotionally damaged and deprived of access to the wider world of education. David Didau included an insightful slide (below) in a recent online talk. Perhaps if Dr Gardner judged the success of current methods of teaching Australian children to read by the achievements of the bottom 25% he might be more inclined to learn how schools could do a better job, and he would save his ire for the likes of Dr Kathy Rushton and Professor Robyn Ewing who write children off the day they walk into kindergarten (see the Australian Phonics Debate of 2018).

However, in English schools, teaching early reading by means of synthetic phonics became a statutory requirement in 2010. In the same year, a clause, added to the national teaching standards made teaching by means of synthetic phonics a benchmark to be met by every graduating teacher.

Incredible, yes, imagine expecting that teachers have sufficient subject matter knowledge to teach well. The next thing you know they’ll be expecting education professors and teacher educators to know a thing or two as well. They don’t have to all agree, but they really ought to be sufficiently informed to enrich the debate and not spread ‘myths and deceptions’.

When the English National Curriculum was re-written in 2014, synthetic phonics, as the sole method of teaching early reading, was made statutory. This year, Ofsted has been instructed to regard teacher education courses inadequate if they fail to instruct students that synthetic phonics is the only means of teaching early reading.

Synthetic phonics is mandated as the sole method for teaching DECODING. As well as decoding, good reading requires oral language, vocabulary and lots of background knowledge. Google ‘Scarborough’s Reading Rope’ for a good model of how reading works.

The narrowing of the wealth of knowledge about teaching reading to a single method amounts to a form of epistemological fascism.

Frankly, this is just laugh-out-loud funny in a distinctly ironic way. Once Dr Gardner expands his own knowledge on the teaching of reading to include the wealth of consistent research findings on the most effective, and inclusive ways to teach reading and spelling, then he might eventually realise why. 

The ‘drivers’ behind the promotion of synthetic phonics in Australia, as in England, include a small band of people that have commercial interests in the whole-scale adoption of synthetic phonics, and an accompanying scheme of levelled, decodable readers.

Actually, the drivers behind the promotion of synthetic phonics in Australia are the parents of the thousands of children who have been left illiterate by their Australian education. These are the people that Australian academics and teacher trainers such as Dr Kathy Rushton and Professor Robyn Ewing blame for their children’s failure. These accusations are all the more insulting as the Australian campaign for better phonics provision, as in the UK and elsewhere, is marked by the inclusion many tutors and intervention providers who are literally fighting to be put out of business by schools teaching reading well.

These ‘synphonpreneurs’ are the proprietors of early reading programs, costing thousands of dollars, who view schools as lucrative marketplaces.

Oh dear. And the award for the clumsiest and most pointless portmanteau word in recent history goes to…

They have adeptly used the media to spread the myth that teachers are failing, and they have inveigled their way into positions of power, alongside Ministers of Education, persuading them that ‘research’ categorically states synthetic phonics is the only way to teach early reading; a claim refuted by reputable studies.

Cite one.

Learning to read is a complex process. Teachers and teacher educators are well aware of this. As reflective professionals, educators are continually reviewing their practice, affirming what works and investigating ways to improve.

Reflection is indeed an important teacher quality. As, however, is sufficient open mindedness, particularly on the part of teacher educators, to put the needs of children ahead of one’s own beliefs. Teachers have little time and often insufficient training to engage fully with the scholarly literature on education related matters so it seems reasonable to expect that their professors/teacher educators should undertake to do so free of prejudice.

Professional dialogue across the profession, as well as between teachers and teacher educators, is the most cohesive way forward for Australian educators; not imposition and myth making.

I look forward to a future when knee-jerk anti-SSP academics actually take the time to read and fully consider the research that they are presumably paid to keep on top of and we can get to a point where a real discussion about the real needs of children might be had.