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Explanatory Notes

Note 1:

Phonic work is best understood as a body of knowledge and skills about how the alphabet works, rather than one of a range of optional 'methods' or 'strategies' for teaching children how to read. For example, phonic programmes should not encourage children to guess words from non-phonic clues such as pictures before applying phonic knowledge and skills. High quality phonic work will make sure that children learn:

• Grapheme/phoneme (letter/ sound) correspondences ( the alphabetic principle) in a clearly defined, incremental sequence;
• To apply the highly important skill of blending (synthesising) phonemes, in order, all through a word to read it;
• To apply the skills of segmenting words into their constituent phonemes to spell;
• Blending and segmenting are reversible processes.

Note 2:

Teachers will make principled, professional judgements about when to start on a systematic programme of phonic work but it is reasonable to expect that the great majority of children will be capable of, and benefit from doing so by the age of five. It is equally important for the programme to be designed so that children become fluent readers having secured word recognition skills by the end of key stage one.

Note 3:

The programme should introduce a defined initial group of consonants and vowels, enabling children, early on, to read and spell many simple CVC words.

Note 4:

If the programme is high quality, incremental and systematic it will, by design, map progression in phonic knowledge and skills. It should therefore enable teachers to: track children's progress; assess for further learning and identify incipient difficulties, so that appropriate support can be provided.

Note 5:

Multi-sensory activities should be interesting and engaging but firmly focused on intensifying the learning associated with its phonic goal. They should avoid taking children down a circuitous route only tenuously linked to the goal. This means avoiding over-elaborate activities that are difficult to manage and take too long to complete, thus distracting the children from concentrating on the learning goal.

Following the Rose Report (2006) the government published ‘core criteria’ to govern programmes used for phonic work:

Criteria for assuring high quality phonic work

Published programmes for phonic work should meet each of the following criteria. Further explanatory notes are offered at Annex A.

The programme should:

• present high quality systematic phonic work, as defined by the Independent review of teaching of early reading and now encapsulated in the Primary Framework, as the prime approach to decoding print (note 1).
• enable children to start learning phonic knowledge and skills systematically by the age of five with the expectation that they will be fluent readers having secured word recognition skills by the end of key stage one (note 2).
• be designed for the teaching of discrete, daily sessions progressing from simple to more complex phonic knowledge and skills and covering the major grapheme phoneme correspondences (note 3).
• enable children's progress to be assessed (note 4).
• use a multi-sensory approach so that children learn variously from simultaneous visual, auditory and kinaesthetic activities which are designed to secure essential phonic knowledge and skills (note 5).
• demonstrate that phonemes should be blended, in order, from left to right, 'all through the word' for reading
• demonstrate how words can be segmented into their constituent phonemes for spelling and that this is the reverse of blending phonemes to read words
• ensure children apply phonic knowledge and skills as their first approach to reading and spelling even if a word is not completely phonically regular
• ensure that children are taught high frequency words that do not conform completely to grapheme/phoneme correspondence rules
• ensure that, as early as possible, children have opportunities to read texts (and spell words) that are within the reach of their phonic knowledge and skills even though every single word in the text may not be entirely decodable by the children unaided

The Primary Framework, Early Reading

Guidance for practitioners and teachers on progression and pace in the teaching of phonics  (PDF) includes:

Criteria that define an effective phonics programme

Outline of Progression

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In March 2005, the Select Committee on Education and Skills recommended  that the DfES commission research to compare synthetic phonics ‘fast and first’ with other methods. The research, using control groups, did not happen. However, in response to the recommendations, the DfES did ask Jim Rose to review the teaching of early reading.

His report is the result of visits to schools, interviews with a wide range of experts and examination of the evidence. He wrote, “the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming and much strengthened by a synthetic approach”. The government accepted his recommendations.