ALL 5-year-olds must be taught to read using a traditional “phonics” method from next September, Ruth Kelly said yesterday.

The Education Secretary abandoned the central element of the Government’s literacy hour in schools after a damning official review concluded that it was failing children. Schools will be told to drop the “searchlights” system, which encourages teachers to use a range of methods. Instead, they will be expected to use phonics “fast and first”, Ms Kelly said. Children will have to learn the sounds of the alphabet and how to put them together to form words.

The interim report by Jim Rose, former director of inspection at Ofsted, concluded that children must be taught “the alphabetic principles to read and spell words”. The literacy strategy, introduced by Labour in 1998, left too much to chance by allowing schools a choice of teaching methods. “Because our writing system is alphabetic, beginner readers will not become skilled and fluent, comprehending, readers and writers if they cannot understand and operate the system. The case for systematic phonic work is therefore overwhelming,” his report said.

The six-month review concluded that there was “no good reason” to delay the teaching of phonics after the age of 5. Research had shown that it was “essential” to a good understanding of English. “The approach which is generally understood as ‘synthetic’ phonics offers the vast majority of young beginners the best route to becoming skilled readers,” Mr Rose said.

Schools will be expected to use phonics in place of existing methods from next September.

The move represents a victory for traditionalists who had argued that the literacy strategy gave insufficient attention to phonics. Under the “searchlights” policy, it was one of four methods, along with whole words, grammar, and context.

Mr Rose highlighted the results of a seven-year project in Clackmannanshire, which taught all children using synthetic phonics throughout primary school. When they were tested at age 11, they were three years ahead of their contemporaries across Scotland.

Mr Rose said that phonics could help to close the gender gap, since a common feature of the best work was that boys did not lag behind girls in English.

It would also enable schools to identify children at risk of falling behind and address concerns about the weakest 16 per cent of pupils who failed now to reach the expected standards of reading at age 11.

But he suggested that tougher action may be necessary both in schools and in training colleges to break down resistance to phonics among many in the education establishment, who favour more progressive methods. Officials at the Department for Education and Skills said that Ofsted would monitor schools to ensure phonics was used appropriately in classrooms.

Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said teachers were “weary of the reading wars”. “The last thing teachers want is a massive upheaval as a result of the promotion of a single fashionable technique. To teach reading effectively there must be a range of strategies.”

RIVAL METHODS

Synthetic Phonics teaches children to read based on the 44 sounds made by letters or small groups of letters (phonemes) which comprise English. Once the letters denoting these sounds (21 consonants, 5 vowels, and double-letter sounds such as ch, sh, th, oo, ee, etc) can be recognised, the child is taught to blend them into words (eg, c-a-t, s-t-r-ee-t)

Analytic Phonics works in the opposite way by breaking words down into constituent sounds, and asking children to recognise phrases and sounds. A child learning to read “catch” with synthetic phonics would read it with c-a-t-ch. In analytic phonics it would be cat-ch

Whole language approach urges children to read, write, speak and listen through trial and error. The learning is not about reading individual words but learning to make meaning from the text. Children read and discuss texts and are encouraged to write stories and read each other’s

Collaborative strategic reading calls for students to discuss a text before reading it and predict what they will learn. Afterwards they consider which parts of the text were hard to understand. They then reflect on the most important aspects and ask questions to show they understand them. Finally, students become experts on particular areas and teach their peers

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