Examination of Witnesses (Questions 261-279)
7 FEBRUARY 2005
MS SUE
LLOYD, PROFESSOR
RHONA JOHNSTON
AND MS
RUTH MISKIN
Q261 Chairman: Good afternoon, may I
welcome Ruth Miskin, Professor Rhona Johnston and Sue Lloyd to
this formal Select Committee meeting. We have had the pleasure
of meeting you informally recently at a seminar and we should
like to get some of the views you expressed there on public record.
It is very good of you to give us another considerable amount
of your time. Thank you very much indeed. As you can tell from
the Chairman's voice, he will be less talkative than he was in
the seminar. Could we get started? Is there one of you who would
like to come up with your point of view in terms of your views
on the use of synthetic phonics in teaching children to read or
do you want to go straight to questions?
Ms Lloyd: It is important to try
to explain what synthetic phonics is. Back in the late 1970s our
school changed to synthetic phonics. We used to use the Look-and-Say,
we had our words on flash cards and it worked reasonably well.
However, there was always a big group of children who did not
do well. It was our head of department who looked at this and
said they did not know their letter sounds when they should have
done. She suggested that we actually start teaching the letter
sounds and teach them how to blend words using those letter sounds.
Immediately we had a huge increase in the results. Then we had
another incident where we were asked to take part in a research
project where the children were to be taught to hear the sounds
in words. After about three or four weeks we found we could easily
get the children to hear that hat is "/h/ /a/ /t/" bat
is "/b/ /a/ /t/" and let is "/l/ /e/ /t/"
and so on. When we put this in we had another big rise and we
reduced the children who used to be below average and we got them
into the higher area. That made me realise that the method can
work because we still had the same teachers and the same children
from the same areas, yet we had this huge rise from an average
of 102 quotient to 110+ on county standardised reading tests.
We thought it was very interesting that by changing the method
we could get such a huge increase, so I went to the local authority
and explained this and they were not interested because what we
were doing was not the in-thing at the time; they would not even
come into the school. I thought something was very wrong. Here
we had this huge rise in our results and yet they would not come
in and look at what we were doing. Since then I have been trying
to understand how an education system can be like this and ignore
something which is so obviously beneficial for the children. We
kept trying to speak to people and one day I met Christopher Jolly
and that is how Jolly Phonics came along. I have been studying
all the research into the teaching and the difference is that
with synthetic phonics you start with the small things; you start
with just a few letter sounds and then you teach those children
to read words with those sounds by blending the sounds together.
Then you do a few more and then you can read more words and you
build up gradually bit by bit, including the diagraphs; you cover
the diagraphs before you even ask the children to go for the hard
thing which is reading text. With the National Literacy Strategy,
which is not synthetic, they go the other way round. They like
the children to read books very early on and they encourage the
children to use strategies that we do not approve of which are
"Look at the picture to help you to read the word" and
also "Just think about what it might be, try to guess what
it is, try to predict what it might be", instead of actually
"Look at the letters" and we work it out. They are very
different approaches and that is why I think synthetic phonics
gets much higher results than the NLS type of phonics.
Q262 Chairman: So, Sue Lloyd, it would
be fair to say you are both a practitioner of synthetic phonics
and also you have a commercial interest in running a business
that sells that particular way of learning to read.
Ms Lloyd: That is right, yes.
We found it worked in the classroom and then Christopher Jolly
said write it. That is how it came out and my colleague Sara Wernham
joined me on this and we have found that when teachers follow
this programme they get very much higher results. If they try
to mix and match with the National Literacy Strategy, where they
are being recommended to read books that they cannot actually
decode or work the words out for themselves, then you water down
the effectiveness. That is why I think it is very important that
everybody knows how effective this synthetic phonics is.
Q263 Chairman: Professor Johnston, you
are an academic and you have researched this area. Are your conclusions
with Sue Lloyd, that it is phonics, synthetic phonics and nothing
but phonics? Is this the true Holy Grail in learning to read?
Prof Johnston: Yes, in the early
stages. It suits the children's developmental level and their
understanding of what they are doing in the reading task. We do
not give children conflicting cues. We do not say "Guess
from text what it is". They are told "When you come
across an unfamiliar word, sound and blend it and work out what
it is".
Q264 Chairman: We will come back to the
research work you have done on this a little later. Ruth Miskin,
what is your view on the importance of teaching in this way?
Ms Miskin: Having used many other
methods of teaching reading in my long teaching career, it was
when I first came to Tower Hamlets that I really realised the
huge impact it could have. We taught children to learn basic letter
sounds really, really quickly, so that they could read them effortlessly
and then they could read some words effortlessly and the impact
that that can have, the empowering effect on children who may
have been considered in the past not to be able to read, or hard
to teach to read, was massive. If we just think about it in terms
of teaching the children some sounds, they are going to read them
very quickly and going to go "b-t-n-at-a-s-s-d-m" really
quickly like that, because we have taught them, using simple little
ways, little cues to help them remember what they are which is
very important. Both Sue and I use cuing systems, so it is really
easy for them to learn sounds. Then of course, again, if they
know these we up the speed, so they go "m-a-st" then
of course they can read this.
Q265 Chairman: Hang on. You are going
to destroy Gurney's reporter's ability to report this, if you
are not careful.
Ms Miskin: Okay, Chairman, I beg
your pardon. They can read the word "s-a-d" because
they can read these very quickly. If we multiply the number of
words that the children can read and then we give them a little
story, a pleasant little story, where there are all the words
that they can work out for themselves, they are given a book they
can read, you see children going "I can read this. I can
read all of it". The fact that they can actually work those
words out is based on this: if a child can decode a text effortlessly,
it means then that all their resources, all their energies go
into working out what the book is all about. If you have to work
very hard at reading every single word that you come across, asking
yourself "Shall I use a picture cue? Shall I use a context
cue? Shall I use a picture cue with a letter cue? Shall I read
on a little bit and try to work out what the word is in the middle?",
the child cannot make that decision whilst they are reading. The
children who are at the lower end find that almost impossible
to do, so then they get the image of themselves as not being very
good readers. But if you give children all the time things that
they can do, things that are manageable, success breeds success,
the rich get richer and, as Keith Stanovich says, who is one of
the major researchers in the States, children are reading more
advanced children's literature by the age of seven. I am showing
Harry Potter here; many of our children can read this.
Now, I just picked up this Harry Potter book and what Keith
Stanovich is saying is that these books contain vocabulary that
they would not come across if they could not read this book. In
other words, the rarity of language that children find in books
is not in our everyday speech. Therefore the importance of getting
children to be able to decode easily and comfortably words like
leather bound book, eagle feather, fourteenth century, shriek,
occasion, medieval, muggles, parchment, downtrodden, Aunt Petunia
will get them to believe that they can read this book. They cannot
use picture cues for Aunt Petunia.
Chairman: Well that sets us off to a
good start. I am going to ask you not to flash a card at me again
because Gurney's reporters are going to be very upset. Let us
get onto the questioning then. Helen, you are going to start off
the questioning.
Q266 Helen Jones: That was very interesting,
but I think you said that you preferred the approach of synthetic
phonics from your experience rather than the National Literacy
Strategy. Yet a number of assessments of the NLS have shown that
it actually improves children's reading and leads to a rising
trend in the number of children reaching the required standard
by 11. What in your view is the reason for that, because your
evidence seemed to indicate that children ought not to be muddled
by different cues, if I may use that word? So why is the National
Literacy Strategy successful then?
Ms Lloyd: Because if you have
no phonics, that is the absolute worst thing. If you have some
phonics, you are going to get an improvement and this is what
has happened. If you could just have a look here, this is the
type of graph you had of the reading results before the National
Literacy Strategy and this was the result in Islington. All the
schools in Islington were tested and they should have had the
normal natural bell-shaped curve with 100 in the middle being
the average. If you look here, we have 17.9% at the very bottom
end and it is not even the very bottom mark, it is below that
bottom quotient. This means that these children really have absolutely
no idea how to read at all. This is why the government felt it
was important to bring in phonics, because this is what had gone
out of the teaching. It had become the fashion not to do phonics
and to look down on people who actually did blendings. It then
took them into the average, so the NLS had more or less taken
us into the middle. However, what had not been understood was
that there was a new phonics type of programme, synthetic phonics
and when it was done properly, where you built up from small to
large, you got the much higher results; the whole average had
gone towards the other end, and the highest was 115 instead of
the average of 100. (This is to my mind the first one.) Islington
was caused exactly by the whole language philosophy which was
all right for children who could read, it had some very good ideas
once they could read, but it was absolutely disastrous for the
children who could not read. They have to have letter knowledge
to be able to get the blending that Ruth and Rhona talk about;
they have to master this blending to become good readers and this
is the effect. There is another school here—
Q267 Helen Jones: May I just ask you
something before you go on to that, please? I think it is important
we are measuring like with like here. Are the two graphs you showed
us relating to the same group of children taught by different
methods? The Committee is interested in what works, but to measure
the relative success of different methods you need to be measuring
them over a similar cohort of children, do you not?
Ms Lloyd: There are the same reading
tests, the Suffolk reading test, which is very well respected.
Q268 Helen Jones: Yes, but that is not
what I am asking you. I am asking you about similar cohorts of
children. Are they measured against similar cohorts of children?
Ms Lloyd: One is the whole of
Islington, so you are going to get every bit in there, and the
other is our synthetic phonics school where I used to work. We
do not have a leafy suburb type of school, but a very ordinary
school, baseline 89, so you are not talking about comparing it
with a school where everything is easy for them.
Q269 Helen Jones: To work out the relative
success of these methods, and perhaps other witnesses would like
to comment on that for the members, we would need a very rigorous
piece of research, would we not, which measured the progress of
relatively similar cohorts of children using different methods
of teaching reading? Are any of you aware of that being done anywhere?
Can you enlighten the Committee with any evidence that might help
us on this?
Prof Johnston: Yes. This is a
study that we did in Clackmannanshire. This was a study of 13
classes and we attempted to match schools on levels of deprivation,
but actually it is a rather deprived region and in the end we
ended up with our synthetic phonics trained group in the areas
of most deprivation. It is very well known that children from
areas of deprivation do much less well in reading, so we actually
set ourselves a very difficult task in trying to boost those children
above the other two groups. There were three programmes. One of
them was synthetic phonics, one of them was an analytic phonics
programme that followed the typical regime used in Scotland, and
the third one was an analytic phonics programme which had a very
rigorous phonemic awareness training programme and that more closely
resembles the National Literacy Strategy's Progression in Phonics
programme. So we gave children in these groups that we compared
programmes which lasted 20 minutes a day for 16 weeks. We pre-tested
to find out what skills they had to start with and we had no imbalances
there. We then post-tested after 16 weeks. What we found was that
the children that had had the synthetic phonics programme were
reading seven months ahead of the other groups of children and
spelling between eight and nine months ahead of the other two
groups; indeed, they were reading and spelling around seven years
above their chronological age. So we had a big facilitation there.
Q270 Helen Jones: What age group was
that?
Prof Johnston: These children
were five-year-olds, so this is Primary 1 in Scotland, which is
equivalent to reception in England.
Q271 Helen Jones: Thank you, that is
helpful. May I then put to you, and perhaps any of the panel might
like to comment on this, a question arising from that? If you
were talking about using synthetic phonics, at what age do you
think it would best be introduced?
Prof Johnston: There is no doubt
that it must be the first thing that you do.
Q272 Helen Jones: When?
Prof Johnston: Our programme was
administered four weeks after starting school. After the 16-week
programme, the region were very keen for children in the other
two groups to be taught the method and they were taught it and
they learned it by the end of the first year at school. We then
looked at performance at the end of the second year at school
to see whether it mattered whether you had been early in the programme
or later. What we found was that the girls who had done synthetic
phonics early in their first year at school were better readers
at the end of their second year at school and in fact for both
boys and girls, if they had done synthetic phonics early in the
first year at school, they were better spellers. So there were
long-term consequences of when they started.
Q273 Helen Jones: What about nursery
children?
Ms Lloyd: Nursery children were
tested in Canada with a research programme. A nursery teacher
saw that they were having a good time in the equivalent to reception
in Canada and she thought she would have a go and do the teaching.
It did not count as research to start off with, but they did then
set it up so it was a proper research programme with the controls.
They found that the children at four were just as easily able
to learn to read as the children at five.
Q274 Helen Jones: How do we account then
for what happens in, let us say Finland, for example, several
Scandinavian countries, where children do no formal reading until
they start school, they start school much later than our children,
but they catch us up in reading and often pass many of our children
very quickly and that is based on no formal teaching in nursery
or kindergarten, but a lot of pre-reading teaching in colours,
sounds, language, designs and so on?
Ms Miskin: You just have to decide
when. You cannot say "Yes, all children must learn to read
at four" or "All children must learn to read at five".
When you decide to teach a child to read, you have to get it right
first time, because you must not let a child fail when they are
four or five or six or whenever it is. For example, we have so
many children going through the system now who by the time they
are seven or eight might have been on five different systems,
five different catch-up programmes and that is key. I was head
teacher in Tower Hamlets and I had the most delightful reception
and nursery teacher. I do not want you to have an image of phonics
as just being deadly dull, with children at desks filling in horrible
little work sheets. I am talking about it being a dinosaur and
going "d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-dinosaur" and they are all
making these big actions the air going round going "d-d-d-d-d",
but they are hearing the sound and then making a great big letter
in the air and going "d" and then they are going "a-a-a-a"
and then "m-m-m-mountain". It is not formal phonic teaching.
Then we have a little puppet called Fred. It is not just what
you do, it is how you do it and if you can make children have
a little game and say "Fred talk time" and you are all
sitting round, the little children in front of you, and you say
"Right, who am I going to ch-oose" and they are going
"choose, choose, choose me, choose me". They have heard
the word "ch-oose", they put choose together and they
are starting to blend. Or it could be "I want you all now
to put your hand on your n-o-s-e" and they are going "n-o-s-e,
n-o-s-e, nose". That is just blending. Then of course if
they know a few letters, suddenly these little tots are learning
them, but if you find a child who is obviously really hardly speaking
English, you cannot say "Right, come on, letter sounds";
that would just be insensitive. You would see them hanging around
the group watching and suddenly goes "m-m-m" and joining
in.
Q275 Helen Jones: What you are telling
us really is that the important things are enjoyment and early
success.
Ms Miskin: Totally; totally. You
have to be really sure that with what you are doing, you will
get success because if there is any shadow of a doubt that you
will not, you are just saying "Hello child, I am going to
help you fail in your reception year".
Q276 Helen Jones: May I just move on?
We are talking about phonics with children in the very early years
of education and I think two things arise from that which you
could perhaps help us with. First of all, English is not a phonetic
language, so that as children move on, they do need to pick up
other clues about how to get the meaning of words. Do you have
anything to tell us about how you can move children on, if you
start them off with phonics, to picking up the other clues about
meaning and words? Advanced readers do that. I think Sue Lloyd
was a bit scathing about prediction used in the National Literacy
Strategy, but in fact when all of us read, we do use prediction,
that is how we read.
Ms Lloyd: There is prediction
for the meaning, but what we are saying is very poor is just trying
to predict what the word is for word identification, to try to
work out what that word actually says. Really the children have
to learn how to work it out from the letters and English is a
more complicated code, which is why in Finland it is much easier
because it is a transparent alphabet. Many researchers feel that
because English is more complicated it actually does need to be
taught earlier. There is a code and if you actually build up gradually,
bit by bit, in the same way that Ruth is saying and with Rhona's
ideas as well, the children can take this on board. Where they
go wrong is where they are expected to memorise whole words and
not process the letters, where they are expected to try and just
guess at these words because they go into the habit of guessing
and they do not know which strategy to choose. If they are trained
and taught just always to work it out from the letters . . .
Q277 Helen Jones: But you cannot just
always work it out from the letters later on, can you?
Ms Lloyd: You can 90-odd% of the
time.
Q278 Helen Jones: You cannot.
Ms Lloyd: Yes, you can when you
know about your sounds like /ai/, /ee/, /ie/, /oa/, /ue/, /or/
etc.
Q279 Helen Jones: What about know, "k-n-o-w"?
Ms Miskin: Would it be possible
just to explain? Sometime the idea of phonics is the "c-a-t"
and it is a transparent code that people are thinking about. In
our language we have 44-odd sounds, the "i-a-um-st-eek-it"
in sounds; so 44 sounds. Now those sounds, say you were learning
Spanish, are represented by one grapheme, one representation.
If you are learning Spanish, for every speech sound you have one
neat little way to write it, give or take the odd one. In England
it is a nightmare, is it not? We do not just have one representation,
we have a few. Take the example of the one that you have just
given me which is "kn", the sound is "kn",
in the word neck it is with the grapheme "n", when it
is in the word know, it is with the grapheme "kn". In
the very early stages when I am teaching children to read, I actually
keep it with the reception children as though they are learning
Spanish. I keep them at a very simple code and Sue does. For example,
when they are with the sound "a", it is represented
with an "a y" and "e" is represented with
a double "ee". Then we give them some very simple texts
which they can decode with those simple sounds. You could say
that if I suddenly gave you "the visitor came to stay"
you would be a bit stumped because this requires something like
125 graphemes that you could not read. At this stage, we end up
doing two things. We are building up gradually from what we call
the transparent code, the neat one that it would be nice to have,
into a more complex code with all of its varieties when they are
ready. You do that too early to the reception child, it is "I
can't read this it is too difficult". What I do is teach
them to read until they have their basic 44 sound letters with
correspondences and they can then read those within some simple
texts where they can work out 90% of the words with a few, what
we call, red words—they are the ones and there are a few
that you are just going to have to know—gradually building
up to Harry Potter.
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