Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
15 NOVEMBER 2004
DR MORAG
STUART AND
MRS DEBBIE
HEPPLEWHITE
Q60 Chairman: What do people like the
National Dyslexia Association think of your phonic methods?
Dr Stuart: Dyslexic children are
almost invariably given structured phonics teaching, because it
is the best way to teach dyslexic children to read.
Q61 Chairman: It is highly rated by them.
Dr Stuart: Structured phonics
teaching: proof that it works. There is the proof from the national
reading panel's survey of the literature which suggests that structured
phonics teaching works better than no phonics teaching or less
structured phonics teaching. It is very difficult in the real
world to do the kind of research that you would like to be done.
It is terribly difficult to match children so that they are comparable
on all possible things. We did try to do that in the study that
I conducted. We had 50 children taught for a term using Jolly
Phonics which is a very nice programme for five-year-olds
and it is fun. We had 50-odd children who were not taught. We
pre-tested them on a range of measures of language and phonological
skills and letter-sound knowledge and various things that we did
not expect to change as a result of the teaching and other things
that we did expect to change as a result of the differential teaching.
We managed to match our groups on almost everything and where
we were unable to match groups, we took account of that in the
statistical analysis we did. So it is not impossible to do that
sort of research, but it is difficult. What our research showed
was that the Jolly Phonics teaching was definitely much,
much more successful in making children fluent readers of words
than the non-phonics teaching. However, that is not the sort of
comparison that you are asking for, which is comparing the phonics
as taught in the NLS with different phonics teaching programmes.
I do not know of any research that has done that.
Q62 Helen Jones: We have heard a lot
about the National Literacy Strategy and the debate about phonics
within it. Has that debate meant that other issues are overlooked?
You mentioned the difficulty of actually designing research. You
said that one thing you can never design into the system is the
effect of a very good charismatic teacher and the problem is that
you cannot measure that. Are there other aspects of the National
Literacy Strategy that either of you either thinks work extremely
well or that do not work well but have been overlooked in the
debate we have had about phonics?
Dr Stuart: Where I am a single
issue politician is on the model of reading which is presented
to teachers in the National Literacy Strategy. The model of reading
which is presented to teachers which is this black hole of four
things operating and disappearing into a text is completely and
utterly misleading and bears no relation to any research on reading
that I know of. This is tragic because it has missed an opportunity
to get a generation of teachers who understood about reading.
I should like to see different models of reading adopted in the
National Literacy Strategy guidance to teachers which were in
accordance with research evidence and knowledge about reading.
Mrs Hepplewhite: Solity says in
his paper for the DfES phonics seminar that his research was the
only piece of research that was really compared with the national
literacy project and the National Literacy Strategy. According
to his research the results from using his early reading research
programme were much higher than the National Literacy Strategy.
So there are statistics where there is a direct comparison. I
also believe that with the Clackmannanshire research, which is
synthetic phonics in Scotland, where the Scottish Education Minister
has now recommended to schools that they may well like to use
that synthetic phonics approach so impressed were the Scots with
the results of the research, which was in a very poor intake area
and I believe the statistic was 50% school meals, with Solity's
research with, yes, some individual schools like Kobi Nazrul when
Ruth Miskin was head and like St Michael's at Stoke Gifford, with
the effect of programmes which are very similar to synthetic phonics,
like Phonographix where it has been used in a remedial
capacity and there are schools and studies around the country
where people will show that improvement ratios were substantial,
I have just heard about one in Norfolk with Sounds Discovery
which is related to St Michaels, it is Dr Marilyn Grant's programme,
which created a 3.8 ratio, meaning that for every month that the
children were put on that programme, they gained 3.8 months in
terms of their reading age, there are other types of phonics,
I believe there are some in Manchester, there is sufficient current
research going on around this country and in Scotland and there
are sufficient numbers of teachers—
Q63 Chairman: What do you mean by "sufficient"?
Mrs Hepplewhite: Let me just finish
and then we can argue about "sufficient".
Q64 Chairman: If you list all of it we
shall be here a long time.
Mrs Hepplewhite: What I am saying
is: at what point do you get some kind of momentum or a significant
statistic for something or movement of something whereby someone
has to take notice of it? I believe that, at the moment Solity's
research is long-standing and it is on quite a few hundred schools.
I believe Ruth Miskin's programme has now moved into quite a few
hundred schools. I am suggesting that there are sufficient numbers
of schools with sufficiently impressive results that this should
now be an open debate whereby the Department for Education and
Skills is prepared to organise comparative programmes. I believe
in any event that the Department for Education and Skills should
have ensured that their programmes were tested with comparative
studies even if they were difficult to achieve. Other people have
managed to achieve it. I am suggesting that the debate has got
to the point where phonics is not in question: phonics teaching
is good for children. So then we have to look at which are the
best phonics programmes, because we cannot continue to fail any
of our children and we want all of our children to get the best
possible start.
Chairman: We would all agree on that.
Q65 Jonathan Shaw: Are the names of the
schools that are operating these phonics techniques available?
Mrs Hepplewhite: Yes and they
are the kind of schools where they want to promote the effectiveness
of what they have done.
Q66 Jonathan Shaw: Would we be able to
get hold of that information?
Mrs Hepplewhite: Yes, you will.[2]
Q67 Jonathan Shaw: Then we will be able
to make comparisons of their plans with the schools that are not
doing this.
Mrs Hepplewhite: Yes and that
is what we have been trying to push for.
Q68 Jonathan Shaw: Perhaps we might be
able to have a look at that in terms of evidence. I should like
to ask Dr Stuart about teacher training. Do you have any interface
with the Teacher Training Agency?
Dr Stuart: No, I do not have an
interface.
Q69 Jonathan Shaw: Are you cast out?
Dr Stuart: I do not think that
they know about me at all.
Q70 Jonathan Shaw: Why is that then?
Dr Stuart: I have no idea.
Q71 Chairman: Does the Teacher Training
Agency not know about you?
Dr Stuart: Nobody from the Teacher
Training Agency has ever approached me to talk about teaching.
Q72 Jonathan Shaw: Do you ever go into
teacher training colleges?
Dr Stuart: I work in one.
Q73 Jonathan Shaw: Then you must do.
Dr Stuart: I work at the Institute
of Education and I go in there every day. However, I work in the
School of Psychology and Human Development and I teach on Master's
courses for already qualified teachers and the continuing professional
development programme. I moved to the Institute of Education because
I recognised that I now knew an awful lot about reading and my
knowledge was useful to teachers. However, I have never been invited
to give so much as a single lecture on the initial teacher training
course which runs in my own institution. That is the extent of
my failure to make a difference.
Q74 Jonathan Shaw: What is the name of
your vice chancellor? Go on, that was a rhetorical question.
Dr Stuart: Things are changing
because the course leader has changed and I am going to be allowed
to teach next year.
Q75 Jonathan Shaw: Are you?
Dr Stuart: Yes.
Q76 Jonathan Shaw: The design of the
NLS. Would you say it was broadly correct?
Dr Stuart: It is broadly correct
to the extent that it recognises that reading should be taught
and that there is a role for some kind of phonics teaching in
how reading should be taught.
Q77 Jonathan Shaw: So does it follow
that it is broadly correct, but it is what happens, it is what
is implemented?
Dr Stuart: Yes I think so.
Q78 Jonathan Shaw: Do you approve of
that?
Mrs Hepplewhite: I do not think
it is broadly correct. I think programmes are contradictory. I
do not think it has been good training and what worries me also
is that at the moment we still need teachers in Key Stage 2 to
be trained in how to improve children who are struggling or failing
with their reading. It is more likely that teachers in Key Stage
1 have had training in Progression in Phonics or Early
Literacy Support and they are now rolling out training in
the latest supplement which is called Playing with Sounds.
I have just done a review on that programme with another lady
and should like to find out whether any testing was done on that
programme.
Q79 Mr Turner: One hundred years of compulsory
education and we have just discovered that reading needs to be
taught. Was it really Frank Smith who put about the idea that
reading did not need to be taught? He sounds pretty demagogic
from your description of him, Dr Stuart, but presumably there
is something behind what he says, some academic research, some
influence that led to that conclusion.
Dr Stuart: He did some experiments
in the 1960s where he distorted texts in various ways and made
it difficult to read. He showed that people could read it despite
the distortions. He used that as evidence that people do not need
to pay very much attention to the actual print in order to get
the meaning of the message. However, the fact that people can
do something does not mean that that is the way that they do do
something. Research since then has shown that people, when they
are reading, do pay attention to every letter in the print, not
just to the words but to every letter in every word in print.
2 Note: http://www.rrf.org.uk Back
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