A Crisis in English Literacy

In December 2007 five hundred authors signed a letter deploring the literacy standards in UK education. This comes on top of the latest Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS 2006) which seemed to show that England had declined to fifteenth position among the 41 countries included.

In fact, as Peter Tymms has shown, it is a mistake to assume that there has been a sudden and recent decline, as comparison between the 2006 PIRLS and its predecessor in 2001 (in which England came 3rd) are false, not only because the later survey includes a number of high-achieving countries such as Denmark not surveyed in 2001, but also because the sample used for England in the earlier study was very unsatisfactory, and Wales was excluded altogether.

However, the bigger mistake would be to deny that there has been decline at all, or to make any attempt to claim that the literacy paradigm which has prevailed in teacher training since the middle of the last century is fit for the future.

The Historical Context

It is necessary to put the situation in historical context: national statistics for Wales show that fully 25% of Welsh people between 16 and 65 (i.e. 450,000 adults) are "at entry level or below" in literacy, while the equivalent figure for England is 16%. For England and Wales together 20% of 11 year olds leaving primary school in 2006 were less than literate. Compare this with the situation towards the end of the 19th century before the Education Act of 1870 when figures for boys indicate only 5% illiteracy and free education was proposed in order to remedy this defect and promote universal literacy. By 1931 the Hadow Report on primary education showed that only a tiny minority of children were failing to read by the age of seven. Sadly, falling standards after the war were never recovered, and from the 1950s onwards expectations have been adjusted downwards time after time, until in 1970 the average Reading Quotient (RQ) had fallen to 97 which was re-rated as 100 (RQ = RA/CAx100 where RA is Reading Age and CA is chronological age).

Turning Around

The turning point came in February 2005 when the Scottish Office released the sevenyear follow-up of the research into the Clackmannanshire schools using synthetic phonics which showed that children taught to read in this way were on average 3.5 years ahead of those using the look-say/ whole word/ searchlights strategy. The results are even more startling in view of the fact that boys outperformed girls on all measures, and pupils from disadvantaged homes scored virtually as well as more advantaged pupils. {Johnson, R.S. and Watson, J.E. "A seven year study of the effects of synthetic phonics teaching on reading attainment" Insight 17, The Scottish Executive}. The following month the then Minister for Education, Ruth Kelly, set up a committee headed by no less than Jim Rose to study the situation with a view towards implementing synthetic phonics as the preferred method of literacy teaching in primary schools. Within a little while she would be heard recommending synthetic phonics, “First and fast”.

The Rose Review

In his well-researched and painstaking report Jim Rose made no bones about the inadequacy of the notion that children can learn to read by some kind of osmosis, with no formal attention to phonics. In particular he explicitly called for a thorough reappraisal of the “searchlights” model which was formalised in the National Literacy Strategy in 1998. This method (known as “3 cues” in the USA) involves children looking for clues in the context of the text rather than decoding the actual letters which spell the word.
Among the recommendations of the Review are the following:-

• “High quality systematic phonic work . . . should be taught as the prime approach in learning to decode ( to read) and encode (to write/spell) print”.
• “For most children, high quality systematic phonic work should start by the age of five . . .”
• “Phonic work for young children should . . . capture their interest, sustain motivation, and reinforce learning in imaginative and exciting ways.”
• “It is not the purpose of intervention work to shore up weak teaching . . . schools should establish ‘quality first teaching’ to minimize the risk of children falling behind”
• “Schools should make sure that additional support is compatible with mainstream practice”
• “Headteachers and managers of settings should make sure that phonic work is given appropriate priority in the teaching of beginner readers.”
• “Those in leadership should make sure that the normal monitoring arrangements assure the quality and consistency of phonic work and that staff receive constructive feedback”
• Finally it is important to “ensure … good value for money in the teaching of reading”

These recommendations from the Rose Review are fully reflected in the renewed Primary Literacy Framework which was published in October 2006, and in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) which became statutory from September 2008. However, the turnaround will not be easy. A Channel 4 television programme in November 2007 (“Lost for Words”) showed that primary school teachers still show considerable resistance to synthetic phonics. It is not difficult to understand why many of the teachers feel threatened by the materials they are supposed to absorb and nervous that they won’t understand them. They are right in that the more available pedagogic guides are appallingly badly designed and riddled with jargon terms which are not intended to be shared with the children. They are also right in thinking that it isn’t quite the way to go about it. Can anyone seriously believe that children should learn 44 phonemes and 120 graphemes before being able to read a single book? While it is clear that beginning readers should attend to decoding the text and not be distracted by searching for cues in pictures, rhythm, rhyme and other context features, this does not mean that the materials should be contentless and boring.

On the contrary the Rose Review states:

“There is some force in the view that, as they learn to master the alphabetic code, children should be given reading material that is well within their reach in the form of ‘decodable books’, that is to say, early reading books specially designed to incorporate regular texts, which children can decode using the phonic skills they have secured. The view is that this enables them to benefit from ‘quick wins’ in practising phonic skills and gaining confidence from reading a whole, albeit short, book. Using such books as part of the phonic programme does not preclude other reading. Indeed it can be shown that such books help children develop confidence and an appetite for reading more widely”.(82. p.27).

It is the view of the English Literacy Foundation that, in spite of claims to the contrary, there is a dearth of such books, though there is a vast array of phony phonics schemes. We believe that there is an urgent need for more carefully designed real story books graded through stages of phonic complexity but nonetheless depicting engaging characters with absorbing illustrations. It is this gap that the elf books are designed to fill.

elf to the Rescue

The elf series consists of 35 story books arranged in seven levels of phonic awareness coded in rainbow colours from RED through to VIOLET. At the RED level only the first 22 simple letter sounds ( short vowels and hard consonants ) are deployed. At the second (ORANGE) level 21 simple regular combinations are added, together with 16 crucial short, irregular words as well as the first few three-letter “seed” words (which can be identified as segments in longer words). As new combinations are introduced they are highlighted in colour within the black text of the stories. Thus it is unnecessary for teachers or other reading helpers to consult any additional material outside the books themselves in order to operate the scheme. They only need to know that, in order to decode the words the beginning reader must move from left to right sounding out each letter in turn and blending smoothly to make the word. The five books at each level can be used in any order (thus facilitating more economical sharing among a group or class).

At each level any single book the child has not yet seen provides a complete test of mastery of the principles to that stage, so no special testing sheets or procedures are required besides the books themselves, but a completely reliable quantifiable assessment is produced enabling comparison over time, and between schools classes or groups, as well as a child-centred record of progress.

Progress from the first through to the seventh stage (equivalent to adult fluency) takes place at each reader’s own pace and is described as “stage not age”. However the scheme is suitable for starting at any age between three and five, and should take a maximum of two years to produce full fluency. The seven principles defining the stages are available in the form of a simple one-page matrix. There is also a summary of the new letter-sound combinations introduced at each stage and a series of cumulative vocabularies for the stages, designed to assist authors and publishers producing further decodable books consistent with synthetic phonics. However it should be stressed again that elf is entirely transparent so none of this additional material is necessary for classroom teachers, parents or other reading helpers who need only the story books themselves in order to operate the scheme.

Assessing the various schemes

In consideration of the scheme assessment criteria published on the DFES website, in conjunction with the Rose Review and consultation with practising teachers, we have extracted 16 criteria for judging early reading schemes.

1. Graded words following systematic synthetic phonics
2. Clear black font
3. Upper and lower case not mixed in early stages
4. Real, appropriately sized books
5. Real stories in whole sentences
6. Engaging characters
7. High quality illustrations, but
8. No non-text context cues
9. Simple stages with interchangeable story books
10. No transitional spellings or artificial graphemes
11. No extrinsic testing required
12. No special training necessary for reading supporters
13. No additional and no expendable materials required
14. From first principles to full reading in under two years.
15. Also suitable for second language and adult learners
16. Good value for money.

The following table provides an assessment of 20 schemes for comparison with elf on these criteria.