Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-305)
7 FEBRUARY 2005
MS SUE
LLOYD, PROFESSOR
RHONA JOHNSTON
AND MS
RUTH MISKIN
Q300 Paul Holmes: So there are schools
in other parts of the country, perhaps particularly in the leafy
suburbs, which are using the National Literacy Strategy, various
mixes of strategies, which are doing much better than average,
just the same as the school you are talking about with synthetic
phonics.
Ms Lloyd: I do not think we know.
We heard that Kevan Collins claims that these schools in Tower
Hamlets were getting high results from the National Literacy Strategy,
but they are also using our programme. We do not know. What we
feel is that our programmes are being spoilt because teachers
feel they have to follow the National Literacy Strategy and introduce
these reading books very much earlier and leave the long vowels
until very much later. What I am saying is that really, if we
are going to have this kind of power from the government, or the
DfES, then it must be thoroughly tested and the head teachers
should know what the results are before being expected to follow
them.
Q301 Paul Holmes: Just one last question
for Ruth. It is partly on leafy suburbs versus inner cities. All
the examples you have given, Ruth, are from the school in Tower
Hamlets where you were the head teacher. The thing that strikes
me about synthetic phonics as you talk about it, is that it does
seem to be fairly Stalinist in a sense, it is total control. The
role for parents with kids aged four to five is nil really. You
said about parents that you would not upset them by saying "You
shouldn't have done that" because you can overcome the harm
they have done. Surely in most parts of the country there are
lots of parents who will try to teach their children to read.
I did with mine; I can remember being taught to read by my brother
from a Beano annual when I was four years old. You seem to be
saying "We want total control through synthetic phonics".
Ms Miskin: No, I said the total
opposite. I said, if you are in a position where the children
have parents who cannot read, you have to be able to make sure
they can do it for themselves. I also said that I welcome parents
who are doing whatever they want at home, because anything parents
can do can only help, even if they are just taught their letter
names. I encourage parents; I was the one knocking on doors to
try to persuade parents to come in. The key thing here is that
I want to put the programme in my teachers' hands so that they
feel safe. I put some of the results here of the other schools
who are using the programme. Yes, I am organised, I was organised
and I did like to make sure that all the children felt safe, the
teachers felt safe, they knew what they were doing. As soon as
a child made good progress, we would move them on a group, we
would work very tightly, very homogeneously to keep them safe.
I do not think keeping a child safe is Stalinist.
Q302 Paul Holmes: The whole point is
that you kept emphasising that in the very early stages with children
they should only be reading books which contain words that they
can read, ones written by yourself or by Sue, for example.
Ms Miskin: I said two things there.
I said one, that the books we want them to work out for themselves
will be the ones with the controlled vocabulary. In days gone
by, when we had Oxford Reading Tree, and lots of schools still
use it, you would not give a child an Oxford Reading Tree book
if they did not know the words off by heart before they started
it. It is all the same sort of system, except this is a phonics
system, we work on building blocks. What we are also giving the
children is a wealth of literature that they are learning off
by heart with us. If they pick up "Each peach pear plum I
spy Tom Thumb", they are running their finger along it pretending
to be a reader as well. We do not want just to give the child
a little book that they cannot read, there are no words in it,
when it is a boring book anyway, "My home is a shell. My
home is a hole. My home is a web"; we are not talking quality
literature here.
Q303 Paul Holmes: So how would you stop
parents who are trying to teach their children to read at home
from using the wrong books?
Ms Miskin: I would not stop a
parent doing anything. What I found was that when the parents
I know are listening to their child read, the first words the
parent says when a child cannot read it, are the same words across
the country "Sound it out".
Q304 Paul Holmes: You have been very
critical of National Literacy Strategy books which include lots
of words that children cannot understand. Surely, you would also
be very critical of parents using the same sort of book.
Ms Miskin: I had better defend
the National Literacy Strategy here because they do not have their
own books at all. It is the publishers that follow their advice.
Whatever a parent does at home that is to do with books and literature
you just say "Go for it". I would not want to stop a
parent doing anything, but what parents do say to me is "Will
you show me what you do at school, so that when we do help we
are talking with the same voice" and then I show them.
Q305 Chairman: I am sorry we have to
draw this to a conclusion. Can I judge from this that you would
like to see, perhaps Rhona Johnston would like to answer this,
a piece of research which took a group of children who were being
taught by the National Literacy Strategy programme and a similar
group, matched very closely, who were being taught by synthetic
phonics, so we can actually see a proper judgment between how
far one group progressed in learning against the other?
Prof Johnston: Yes, I think that
absolutely needs to be done to establish what the facts are. I
should stress that my research has been paid for entirely by the
Scottish government. It actually voted £18 million in 1997
to look at early intervention and that money was given to the
regions. We were invited by Clackmannanshire to do the study,
but that money was only given out if they did pre-tests and post-tests
of an experimental and a control group using standardised tests.
This is what I think should happen in England.
Chairman: Thank you very much, all three
of you, for your evidence. I am going to ask the new team to step
forward. Thank you.
| 
