So the results are out. Nationally 58% of children 'passed' the decoding check, which means 42% of Year 2 children will have to resit it next summer, alongside SATs.
So what has it actually achieved? I know some people might say nothing, but I'm inclined to be a bit more optimistic and say it has actually had a positive impact, though not in the way the Government quite intended.Whilst I doubt it will change the reading success or otherwise of some children, it has raised expectations and created a bit of competition amongst schools. There is the feeling that if Sunnyville Primary down the road can get 70% passing then so should Totside in the same area- but they only got 30%. It is making schools think about why their children are not achieving as well as they might be able to.
In fact I suspect much of the data, when broken down school by school, will show just that sort of gap is making up the average. Many Local Authorities will find they have a group of schools who did really well and the other half that did really badly- the data needs to elaborate on the percentages of schools that did well. Surely it is of far more concern if a local authority has schools at extreme ends of the scale with their results, rather than a fairly even spread? Something must be wrong if the former is true; no strategic overview and no coordination.
I was in a very nice middle class school last week that got, what we now know, to be below the national average. They were going on about how many special needs they had. I pointed out that a school I knew, with many very deprived children had scored considerably better than them. They asked what they had done and I said they had not used any excuses. The only children who had not passed the test were one really special need and a handful who had been in school less than a term. The expectations were so high, but they had been achieved. This sobered the middle class school considerably and they stopped using excuses and turned it around to say, we must do as well as that next year.
As I said, I'm not sure that the test will actually raise reading standards, as it is not about reading but decoding. Many good readers did come unstuck on the nonsense words and did not actually do as well as the careful plodders who need to sound every word out. Also schools will become so fixated on the phonics test they will forget the essential element of language comprehension- they won't be able to help it! I saw this with the CLLD (Communication, Language and Literacy Development) Programme. Schools would get to grips with the phonics to the detriment of understanding- particularly as there is now such a strong requirement to use nonsense words. I worked a lot with schools at the latter end of the CLLD to improve phonics use in reading through real application, for example in guided reading. Schools must not forget to keep up all that good work with language comprehension as decoding alone is completely useless!
The other effect of the phonics test has been what I can only describe as OFSTED terror. Schools due an inspection have become paralysed with fear that OFSTED will march in and condemn them before they can correct the faults shown up in the test. In some cases OFSTED would be right to criticise a school, if for example they had not really got round to teaching phonics properly before this year, which is the case for some schools. Other schools however, merely handled things badly, so keen were they not to pressure children they did not actually teach to the pace required and consequently children had simply not covered the amount of phonemes required to pass the test. I hope that if schools are able to show what they are putting in place to remedy the situation OFSTED will not be the executioner schools are expecting them to be.
So what will happen now the results are out? I think no-one has quite decided and there are probably lots of meetings right now to think about what they can do with the statistics and if it really matters anyway? Lots of teachers have asked me if I think the test will be abandoned; sadly I don't think so.
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