modern.htm/27SEP2001

The modern ideas are 'dead wrong'

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We do not need new teachers, but we do need new teaching ‑ or rather, we need to restore the old teaching, as set out in this book. The new teaching has been based on opinions, ideology, even philosophy, not on facts or properly tested and monitored changes. The emphasis has gone far too much onto shared reading, emergent literacy, emergent spelling. When children can read for themselves, reading becomes a very personal, individual activity, and we would expect shared reading to dwindle. There is still a need to be interested in further reading, to explain new words, perhaps to discuss ideas presented, if the reader wishes. But while you will need to go over the work to keep spelling satisfactory, and now learn the irregular words, most reading will be straightforward, and fluency will grow steadily.

The modern ideas have done so much harm, have been around for so long and believed by so many that the sheer size of the problem, its enormity, protects it! People have trusted the teachers, student teachers have trusted their lecturers. Parents have felt the teachers MUST know what they are doing. The teachers with good intentions have tried their best to put into practice theories which, on their own, simply do not work.

People cannot believe that the national average expects 1 child in 7 to have failed badly by age 7, and that 'above national average' (Norfolk 1993, 1994, 7+ ARQ 100.8, 1 in 7 with an RQ of 85 or less, which means bad failure; ARQ = average reading quotient) can still be appalling, and far below potential. It is the lost potential which has never been grasped. With good phonics‑first, the national average will rise by about ten points, and so will the 7+ ARQ of almost every school. Lack of phonics has kept attainment below potential ever since WW II. But parents cannot grasp how bad it has been, "They'd never allow it" so they went on trusting the experts. I did. The idea that a whole profession could be so wrong in such a simple thing, for so long, and never check up on what they were doing was simply too preposterous... but it happened. Parents, students and others assumed that the professors knew what they were doing. We now have 9 million with literacy problems, and David Blunkett (Shadow Education Secretary) has now (May 30 1996) said that the teaching has been wrong. Let us hope that bodies like the National Association of Primary Teachers, National Assn of Advisers in English, National Assn. for the Teaching of English, National Assn. for Advisers in English, UK Reading Assn., Centre for Language in Primary Education, and others will now follow his lead, and give infants the class teaching in systematic phonics that they need, AT THE VERY BEGINNING.

The National Curriculum (May 1994) will improve things in time, but although the word 'guessing' has been removed, instead of "intensive, systematic, multi‑sensory phonics", “phonics‑first", the alphabet is seen as a preparation for phonics rather than part of early phonics teaching. Guessing still hangs around in "taught to apply various approaches to word identification and recognition", "identifying initial and final sounds in words" and a sight vocabulary is still seen as part of beginning to read. Expectations are still very low indeed. Most teachers have never seen children well taught, and have no idea how well they can do, in reception class. Teachers have been put off whole‑class teaching.

The Programme of Study has been drawn up by people who have had post‑war "training" in reading, and not by people who have taught systematic phonics and seen that we do not need to guess. Para.4.1 says "Teachers should draw on various methods of teaching reading." There is no discouragement of picturecues (guessing) or context cues. Parental involvement is now seen only as shared reading, not teaching phonics.

The May 1994 version of the National Curriculum has left out the earlier lists of letter‑groups which, although not in any logical order, were better than nothing. We must hope that as teachers see the big improvement from even poor phonics, they will seek for ever better phonic programmes, and gradually forget about sight vocabulary, guessing and other 'modern' ideas.

Much tax‑money is now being wasted in education (over 10% of the total education budget in some LEAs goes on special needs.) because of the amount of reading failure, total or partial, CREATED by wrong infant teaching. If you cannot read, secondary school life is a prison sentence. Illiteracy is a prison. So what have teachers been told? And believed.... !