Memorandum submitted by Valerie Legg,
Chartered Educational Psychologist
1. Introduction to Person Submitting Evidence
I am a Principal Educational Psychologist with
27 years experience of teaching children to read and 16 years
experience in dealing with reading failure. I completed a Doctoral
degree in 2004 researching the early identification of those children
likely to fail to learn to read and what can be done to intervene
to mitigate this.
2. Which children benefit from current approaches?
Are all equally well-served by current policy guidance on reading?
The National Curriculum has been with us since
the early 1990s, with the National Literacy Strategy, following
a few years later. Early indicators of the success of the pointed
out the continued failure to learn to read at age equivalence
or the same level as their peers of 20% of those children receiving
this Strategy. This led to sequential developments in Extra Literacy
Support (ELS), Additional Literacy Support (ALS), and now Wave
3. Each of these subsequent developments of the NLS is based on
an analytic/synthetic phonics approach to the teaching of components
of reading and each purported to raise literacy levels for the
20% of children who fail to learn to read with the NLS—but
there has been no change to the failure rate so far.
3. Does policy/guidance have a sound base
in research evidence, looking at relative weight given to synthetic/analytic
phonics, whole word/language, onset/rhyme etc?
The answer to this is: To a large extent—"Yes";
but there are major precursors to literacy in all children—their
levels of language development. In particular, the development
of a young child's vocabulary has the most significant effect
on their developing phonology. My own research, and that of many
others, (references available on request), indicates that where
language development is insufficient, literacy is negatively effected.
4. This is of serious consequence since:
(a) The Foundation Stage of learning gives
too little weight to language development per se;
(b) Baseline Assessment practices within
the Foundation Stage summate indicators of language development
in such a way as to disallow identification of children who need
further support to develop language to a sufficient level before
embarking on even informal literacy tuition;
(c) The Department of Health (driven by
central policy) have removed the routine screening of the development
of two-year old children by health visitors. This means that those
young children whose language is not developing sufficiently to
enable them to become literate later are not now generally noticed
until reading fails—characteristically at 7 [instead of
identifying and supporting from 3 or 4];
(d) The markers of inadequate language development
to enable literacy development later are subtle and missed by
most working with young children; and
(e) All staffs working with young children
need much more training to be able to develop children's language
at this stage.
5. Introduction of early literacy strategies—teaching
children to read from a very early age
Whilst referrals to Speech and Language Therapists
may have diminished as a result of the removal of the routine
screening of the development two-year olds, referrals for literacy
difficulties to local authority specialist support teachers and
educational psychologists have increased three fold—and
Wave 3. This must surely indicate that current policy and practises
are inadequate, let alone indicating that reading should be formally
taught to even younger children?
6. Recommendations for action
I welcome this Commons Select Committee into
reading and urge you to weigh seriously evidence of the value
of pre-literacy experiences, that is:
— consider a later start to education
to enable children's further language development before formal
education—[there is little evidence to suggest language
development is speeded by entry to school and most children have
fully developed language by age 6y 6m]. Or;
— massively change the emphasis of
literacy teaching to a language-based approach and train all Early
Years and Foundation Stage staffs accordingly and to a high level.
December 2004
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