this computer. And greetings, this is the Reading Instruction Show. I am your host as always and
we've been doing interviews. We have a very special guest, Paul Gardner, and he's going to tell us
his story starting in England. Welcome, Paul. Thank you for being on our show.
You're welcome, Andrew. Thank you for inviting me. So tell us your story.
Okay, well, we're going back to the year 2010. And I'm a university lecturer in England teaching
English to student teachers who are going to be primary teachers. It's a primary B8 course.
And in 2010, there were some significant things that happened. One was that the teaching of
synthetic phonics was made statutory in English schools. And for your listeners, I just want to
make it clear that this was only English schools. Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales have separate
education, they're separate education jurisdictions. So what the British government said, actually only
applied to English schools. So the teaching synthetic phonics from years one to two, so that's five to
seven year olds was made statutory, statutory requirement. At the same time, there was a clause
inserting into the qualified teacher standards, the standards that we as lecturers had to abide by
in delivering our curriculum to student teachers. So there was a clause added there
of that we had to teach synthetic phonics to our students. Okay, so I complied with that as a
university lecturer. I implemented that. And however, I wasn't entirely comfortable with the
exclusive teaching of synthetic phonics as the only method of early reading. So I basically
got my students to critique it as the only method. So for example, when students went out on school
placements, which was their teaching practices, you know, an essential requirement of the course,
and they came back into universities, I would I would question that. So what did you see about
the teaching of early reading? And they would tell me and I said, well, did it work or were there
any problems? What one of the challenges? And many students reported that children were
accurately reading what was on the page, the words, so they were decoding effectively. But
they noted that many of the students were not really understanding what they were reading.
So we interrogated this week, deconstructed it and we considered, well, what what did children
actually need in order to both decode and comprehend. So we expanded on this
linear approach to the teaching of early reading. Then if we skip to 2012, what lessons need to know
is that schools and schools of education, that's university departments that teach student teachers
are inspected by an organization called Offsted. So this is a government body that goes in to
ensure that you're meeting the national requirements for teacher standards and so on and so forth.
So we had an Offsted inspection in 2012, October 2012. As I was the lead
academic for the primary English, I met with the Offsted inspector.
The Offsted inspector asked me no questions about the board English curriculum. All questions in this
45-minute interview were solely about synthetic phonics, how we were teaching synthetic phonics,
how we knew our students had acquired the knowledge in order to teach synthetic phonics and so on and so forth.
So that was that. We then skip 10 months to August 2013. I've just come back from holiday, I've walked into my house
and on the mat inside was an envelope which I opened up and it was a letter from the Vice Chancellor of the University
informing me that I had been suspended from the university pending an investigation.
And I'd been suspended because the wording was something like, it has come to light that your performance at the
Offsted inspection in relation to the university's duty to teach synthetic phonics basically was wanting
and that I had not fulfilled my duties, my obligations. Well, it turns out that I actually had a colleague with me in that interview with the Offsted inspector.
And I remember her saying after the meeting, well, she didn't understand what I was saying.
Well, she didn't ask anything other than questions around synthetic phonics, but you know, you did really well. Okay.
So I then contacted the university. I was told that, pardon me, my conditions of my suspension included that I was not to enter the campus.
I was not to talk to my colleagues. And so I challenged both of those points. I said, well,
I'm actually doing my PhD. Are you telling me that I cannot use the library on campus?
And so they, they changed their wording and said, well, you can use the library, but only after five o'clock in the evening.
Okay. It was a 24 hour library. So, you know, I could use it from five through two, presumably the next morning.
And I said, also, with respect to colleagues, I said, so some of my colleagues are personal friends. Are you telling me that I'm not allowed to talk to my personal friends?
And they kind of backtracked on that and said, well, no, you can talk to colleagues who are your personal friends. So, but nevertheless, they look for those kind of stipulations.
By the way, this is a nightmare for American professors. What you're describing as a nightmare.
Yes, it was a nightmare for me too. I could assure you. So in fact, I was suspended for what would have been approximately three months, I think it was.
Towards the end of the three months, there was a so-called hearing where I was interviewed by an academic from another department. He was a sports scientist, along with somebody from the human resources department.
And he began by sort of asking me about this claim that I've not met my requirements to teach synthetic phonics.
And in the wording of the accusation, there was the term synthetic phonics and phonics. So I began by sort of saying, well, are you familiar with the difference between these two terms?
And so I had to explain all that.
I was the only person who was interviewed. I asked, well, where did these allegations came from? And I was told, I can't tell you that.
So there was no clarity around who gave any evidence to suggest that I had not taught my students how to teach synthetic phonics.
In the end, I was exonerated. I was reinstated.
But I was told that I would have to teach on a different campus, which was some 20 miles away.
And I would be moved to a completely different department. And the department taught an aspect of English that was really outside. It was teaching English to speakers of other languages, which was not my particular forte.
And I felt very uncomfortable about the prospect of doing this.
I challenged it. I met with one of our provisional chancellors who ultimately agreed that it wasn't the best place for me to teach and that I didn't have to move campus in the end.
However, I was not put back into teacher education. I moved to an allied course, which was education studies. So it was still within the realm of education, but I wasn't teaching English anymore, which is my passion.
So it derailed my career, basically. My career was pretty much unholy for two to three years. And it was quite clear that I was not going to get anywhere at that particular university and ultimately had to leave and move elsewhere.
So, at the time, I inquired with my professional organization, the United Kingdom Literacy Association, to see if anybody else had experienced this.
And I was told that no, nobody else had actually been suspended. Nobody had gone through what I had gone through. However, they had received reports from some schools of education that books had been banned from their book lists.
So, any book that suggested there was an alternative method or an additional method to teaching early reading other than synthetic phonics was banned from their book list.
And, yeah, so there was a level of scrutiny and policing of synthetic phonics that was really very pernicious. And it remains the case now.
But it's probably even worse now because not only would the individual be castigated for teaching anything other than synthetic phonics or anything other than exclusive teaching a synthetic phonics.
Universities would lose their funding for and their student numbers and that has happened in some instances.
It's a really, it's a real heavy sledgehammer that's being used in England to ensure that there was only one method to teaching early reading.
If you can't win the argument in an academic setting, you bully.
And that's what that's what has been done. It sounds like to you and that's a scary thing. The sledgehammer is an apt metaphor.
Yes, indeed. It was bullying. It was harassment. And I think that it's important to to kind of recognize not just the fact that your career is derailed.
It's the emotional and psychological toll.
The police state.
Indeed, it's very much like yes, it's very much like a police state, which leads me to the view that the exclusive teaching of synthetic phonics has less to do with literacy education and much more to do with control.
Yes.
It's about controlling what teachers do. It's about controlling children and how they learn.
And I can't help but feel that because this is an approach that's used in state schools.
It's not used in the private sector necessarily.
It is actually, for me, I think it's a form of miseducation.
It is a way of containing what children are able to do and how they're able to think because it's also alongside the teaching synthetic phonics is the use of direct instruction as the same pedagogic approach.
So when we put these two things together, when we're testing children or teaching children from the smallest units of language in a direct instructional approach.
And there have been several reports in England subsequent to the implementation of synthetic box around how this narrowing of this approach to early reading not only takes up time.
It also therefore it also takes away from other aspects of the English curriculum and reading.
In many schools, teachers now don't read to their children because they say they don't have time to read to their children. They see it as a luxury as an accessory rather than an essential part of the reading curriculum.
The other point that I should probably make is that from 2012 England imposed the phonics screening check. So when children are in at the end of the first year of education and year one, so they can be either five plus or six.
So there can be a huge age range when they take gap in the age range when they take this test. The phonics screening check is 40 words 40 discrete words.
20 of the words so 50% are nonsense words.
Yes.
And the first 12 words in the in the test are these nonsense words.
The children have to make the graphophonic correspondences. That's the sound letter correspondence and blend the word synthesize it to read the word.
In the early stages when there was a pilot of this in 2011 and then the phonics screening test proper in 2012 early studies suggested that teachers were reporting that better readers were actually failing the test.
Yes.
So if we take for example the word storm let's suppose the word storm. Sorry, let's put so the word might be strong. Okay, nonsense word might be strong.
But the better readers were. Yes, they were making those graphophonic correspondences, but then they were reading a real word.
Trying to make sense of it.
Indeed. That's exactly what children do.
They try to make sense of what they're reading because that's the logic of it. Yes.
At the heart of language is meaning making and the heart of reading is meaning making and therefore they try to make meaning out of things who would read nonsense words that's nonsense.
Yes, it is. It is nonsense words. But I suppose if you are wedded to the logic that the reading is about or decoding is about making the link between the letter and the sound.
Okay.
There is some logic to it because you prove that the children are making those graphophonic correspondences and they're not reading it because it's a sight word to them.
However, for me, I think the misconception is that English is a phonetic language.
Right.
And synthetic phonics works up to a point it works with CVC words constant vowel constant words like cat dog, etc.
And I don't like that. But as we know, English language includes words that are phonetically regular.
And we have to learn them in other words, the words was one, etc.
You know, and they get around this by saying, well, these are tricky words, these are tricky words, but nevertheless, in the English curriculum, the strategy curriculum in England.
Teachers are encouraged to even read those words using synthetic phonics as their first method.
So it's a real it's a, it's, it's almost a balling could narrow perspective of early reading that is driven by this sledgehammer, you know, and everybody has got to got to adhere to it.
Also in England, what happened at the time was schools were told they had to adopt a synthetic phonic program.
Okay.
Many of these synthetic phonics programs include decodable books.
Now there's one such program called read write ink.
So prior to read writing is a person called Ruth Miskin. Well, Ruth Miskin was appointed by the government to be their literacy expert.
And the government then said, okay, schools have got to have one of these programs.
And we will match fund their purchase of these programs.
So read writing was one one program that they promoted as a consequence of about 25% of schools in England now use read writing in that schools.
I've heard principles in schools or headteachers in schools refer to their schools as read writing schools.
And this idea of synthetic phonics has become so much part of the educational psyche so much part of the culture of early reading in England to now that schools are actually equating themselves with reading programs and decodables.
And this has influenced other jurisdictions as well.
I now work in Australia.
The first things that I was told when I came to Australia was that in terms of education, Australia follows what England does.
Well, my response that was, well, I come from the future then and I can tell you you don't want to go there.
However, unfortunately, I'm not experiencing deja vu because Australia is adopting exactly what England has done.
And it's being driven by a particular think tank in Australia.
Which I think has quite close links with the Murdoch media, for example.
And there are now, you know, the very powerful voices that are pushing the synthetic phonic approach.
And the United States in Australia had adopted the phonic screening check directly from England.
And so that whole kind of the so-called reading war has now been imported into Australia as, and so I'm giving it as I'm on my second wave of this debate around early reading.
And I don't know, in England then, have all the reading problems been solved?
Since they must have since they adopted this, this curriculum.
That's a really interesting question. Of course, the government in England says that the standards reading have improved.
And that's an argument that's being used in Australia as well to promote synthetic phonic. So the argument is, since the implementation of the phonic screening check, standards of reading have improved.
Okay, well, let's deconstruct that.
So just to set up the kind of testing regime in England.
So at the end of year one students do the phonic screening check. At the end of year two students have what is called SETs. It's a standard assessment test.
So it's a national test, standard national assessment test. So they have that at the end of year two, and also in year six.
All right. So remember the phonic screening check was implemented in 2012.
The last testing before COVID was 219.
Okay, so in theory, we have seven years of phonic screening check data.
Okay, what does that data suggest? All right, well, the data suggests from that phonic screening check.
But the percentage of children who achieve the past mark has increased remarkably.
Okay, so in the first year, 2012, it was approximately 58% of students passed the test.
And in 219, approximately 81% passed the test. Okay.
Now, we also have to put into account the fact that in 2012, it was relatively novel.
Students hadn't necessarily been coached in passing the test. But from 2013 onwards, there was a lot of coaching in how to pass the test, how to read the nonsense words.
So a lot of time was invested in, you know, teaching the test.
So was the test basically a phonics test?
Yes. Yes, exactly that.
So in each phonics, you're going to get higher scores on phonics tests.
Correct. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, it was that test where there were 40 discrete words.
Oh my God.
Yes, 20 of which were nonsense words.
And as I said previously, in the early years, many of the better readers were failing the test because they were trying to write meaningful words.
Okay, so now if, if stand, if that, if that resulted in the improvement of levels of reading, we would see a commensurate increase in the percentage of students scoring highly in the SATs test at the end of year two and the end of year six.
Yes.
Okay, now there is a problem here in making a comparison with the data because the government decided to change the, the SATs tests or the content of the SATs test in 2016.
Okay.
So, in effect, we've only got three years of data comparative data.
What that data shows is that although there was an increase in the percentage of children passing the phonic screening test, there was only a 1% difference in one year of those three years in the SATs tests.
So, you know, it went up 1% and then it came down 1%. So in effect, there was really no significant change in the levels of reading in these tests, which included of course comprehension.
It also needs to be borne in mind, but the, the, the levels of achievement in the SATs test prior to 2012 prior to the phonic screening check were rising.
And then when it got to 216 when they changed the test, there was a dramatic fall in percentages. And then as I said, there's one kind of 1% increase in one year in the results, which then leveled out the following year.
So in effect, there has been no, there is no evidence that reading levels have improved in England when you look at the results from the SATs data and compare it to the phonic screening check data.
Interesting. So, what advice do you have for us, because we're just beginning to get these top down mandates. Do you have any advice for people at higher ed or primary schools.
Well, my advice would be to try and argue that this unilateral approach to the teaching early reading really is, is the wrong path to be going down.
You know, we have, we have decades of evidence that you know, a multi faceted approach to reading is really important. And I think to reduce reading and language down into its smallest component is completely erroneous.
Yes, you know, I think, I think, I think we have to hold on to the fact that the language and reading is about meaning making.
Yes, and understanding meanings.
Yep.
And my, my particular view is that, you know, children are kind of almost natural semi-autisticians in the thing in by that I mean that the young child is looking at their environment.
There are signs and symbols surrounding them in their environment. And what they are doing is they're trying to make meaning of these signs and symbols.
And they understand that signs and symbols have meaning. Yes, they are not simply sounds.
You know, and children will acquire their letter sound correspondences, their reading of words in all kinds of ways.
And to, to restrict the, the ways in which they do that, I think it's completely wrong. For me, it's a form of miseducation. Yes.
And as far as I can see, it's, it's being applied to a particular section of the school population. It isn't applied across the board. So what's happening is that the kids in poorer schools are being taught this method.
And kids in richer schools get a much richer and broader literacy and language curriculum.
So Paul, you have so well described a phenomenon. I like your metaphor of blinkers looking only at phonics and the sledgehammer. That's what I'm taking from this.
And it's been like a picture of Christmas yet to come. And it's not a pretty picture.
No, it's not. No, no.
Again, I say I come from the future.
And you don't want to go there.
Yes. Well, it's a scary future.
I want any last words you want to say.
Oh gosh.
I think possibly that one way in which we get through this is by liaising across jurisdictions. So the USA, England, United Kingdom, more generally, Australia, the Anglophone countries, I think, the experts and teachers in these respective jurisdictions need really to come
together. We need an international forum. Because what I see happening is that the drive around synthetic phonics direct instruction is an international phenomenon.
Yes, I think I think it's coming through various think tanks. And it's being it's migrating across these jurisdictions.
But that we have to do very much the same kind of thing as as literacy expert and teachers, we have to come together. And we need a single international voice, I think, to counter these views.
However, there is a problem here. And it's one that we've experienced in Australia. And that is that if you simply come out and counter it, then the other side the, the symphones as I call them, or the symphone prener's the people who are peddling their synthetic
phonics, they're the people who are peddling their synthetic phonics and making money out of them. Because that's the other thing. When you when you trace the voices behind synthetic phonics back, you find a money trail.
You know, there is there is a program that they're promoting. So, so the, the link between direct instruction, so that it phonics and money is, it's quite a profound one, I think.
Rather than, than simply arguing against this particular case, because what they then say is, there is a reading war.
There isn't necessarily a reading war, manufacturing a reading war in order to get publicity, right, to be able to put that particular case.
That's why we have the International Literacy Educators Coalition.
I didn't know about that. Thank you, Andrew. I know we're International Literacy Educators Coalition. And we have several people from Australia and New Zealand, a lot of people in Canada, but we are trying to create these international things.
All right, Paul, your story was scary, but necessary.
Yes, I think it's important that other people know about this.
Absolutely.
This has been the Reading Instruction Show. I'm your host, Andy Johnson.