Primary schools awarded grants to spread phonics teaching

The check is taken by all six-year-olds in maintained schools, free schools and academies at the end of Year 1.

Eight primary schools have been awarded grants of £10,000 each to work with local primary schools in their area, as part of the Government's drive to eliminate illiteracy.

Each of the schools receiving the funding had more than 93 per cent of six-year-olds passing the check, is a high-performing school and has a track record in leading improvement.

The money will be used by groups of schools to develop models to improve phonics teaching that have the potential to work for other schools.

The Government sees phonics as the best way to teach children to read.

It claims that since the phonics check was introduced in 2012, 100,000 more six-year-olds are on track to become proficient readers.

Schools minister Nick Gibb said, 'I want to go further and ensure all children across the country are benefiting from the excellent phonics teaching I have seen first-hand in our best schools.

‘We are serious about eliminating illiteracy in this country, which means we need to reach a position where every primary school is teaching reading using phonics, as well as the best.’

In 2014, 74 per cent of Year 1 pupils met the expected standard in the check, up from 58 per cent in 2012.

Ministers say that meeting the expected standard in the check is a strong indicator of how well children will go on to do in wider reading assessments.

Of the Year 1 pupils that passed the check in 2013, 99 per cent went on to achieve the expected level of reading at the end of Key Stage 1 a year later.

The check is a list of 40 words, half of which are ‘nonsense’ words, which children read one-to-one with a teacher to make sure that all pupils have learned phonic decoding.

However, teachers remain unclear about the value of the check.

A report published last month on behalf of the Department for Education found that around a third of teaching staff surveyed believed too much value was placed on phonics.

The research carried out by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) said that while the introduction of the check has had an impact on pupils’ attainment in phonics, it could not prove it has had an impact on children’s attainment in literacy.

The schools leading the phonics partnerships are:

• Trenance Learning Academy, Newquay, Cornwall.
• St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School, Ilford Essex.
• Bishopton Redmarshall CE Primary School, Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham
• Witham St Hughes Academy, Lincolnshire.
• Golden Valley Primary School, Nailsea, North Somerset.
• Mangotsfield CE, Bristol.
• St George’s CE Primary, Wandsworth.
• Hawksmoor Primary, Greenwich.