Public Petitions Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, November 9, 2017

Official Report 627KB pdf

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New Petition

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Literacy Standards (Schools) (PE1668)

Under agenda item 2, we have one new petition for consideration. PE1668, by Anne Glennie, is on improving literacy standards in schools through research-informed reading instruction. Two written submissions in support of the petition, from Dr Marlynne Grant and Dr Sarah McGeown, are included with our papers.

I welcome Anne Glennie to the meeting along with Dr McGeown, who is a senior lecturer in development psychology from the University of Edinburgh, and Gordon Askew MBE from the International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction. You may make a brief opening statement of up to five minutes, after which the committee will ask a few questions to help inform our consideration of the petition.

Thank you, convener. I am very grateful for the opportunity to present evidence to the committee. I would especially like to thank Gordon Askew and Dr Sarah McGeown for giving evidence alongside me today. We have chosen to share the five minutes for our opening statements.

I am concerned about Scotland’s decline in literacy standards. Through no fault of their own, teachers in Scotland lack the necessary deep subject knowledge required to teach reading effectively. This assertion is not new. It was highlighted in the 2014 review of the Scottish Government literacy hub approach. Despite being supported by research and being recommended specifically in the Scottish Government’s literacy action plan from October 2010, synthetic phonics is not supported by current curriculum for excellence documentation, nor is it covered adequately in initial teacher education. Reading research has moved on, but Scotland has not. We are around 12 years behind other countries on this. We cannot afford to wait any longer.

This petition is about ensuring that teachers and teacher training institutions have access to and use research-informed reading instruction to ensure that all children in Scotland can achieve their potential in reading. This is not about removing teacher autonomy and it is not about implementing a prescriptive approach to the teaching of reading. This is about empowering teachers by ensuring that all teachers have access to the most up-to-date research on children’s reading instruction and then allowing them to make decisions about how best to apply it based on the specific students that they teach.

I believe that synthetic phonics has the potential to achieve the Scottish Government’s vision of narrowing the poverty-related attainment gap in reading. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds typically start school with weaker vocabularies than children from more affluent backgrounds. My research has shown that when children are taught by an eclectic approach to read—that is, they are taught a variety of strategies to read new words such as whole-word recognition or the use of context—their language skills predict how well they will learn to read. However, when children are taught by the synthetic phonics approach, vocabulary skills do not predict word-reading success. If you are committed to narrowing the poverty-related attainment gap in reading, surely it makes sense to educate teachers in a method of instruction that is not dependent on a good vocabulary for success.

Finally, I know of no research evidence to suggest that synthetic phonics undermines a love of reading. I believe that we are all passionate about ensuring that young children have a joy and interest in books, words and stories from a young age. What we know is that synthetic phonics needs to be positioned within a curriculum that develops broader oral language skills and a love of reading, too. Synthetic phonics allows children to become independent readers earlier on, and we know that more skilled and independent readers go on to have more positive attitudes towards reading and are more confident and motivated readers.

Good morning. It is good to be with you. Although I am an adviser to the Department for Education in England, I assure you that I am not here because I think you ought to do what England does. I am here as an individual to share my experience of what I know works with children reading the English language wherever they live.

One of the really remarkable things about reading over the past 50 or 60 years is that a lot of children learn to read and pick up reading almost however they are taught. However, and it is a very big however, there have always been a very significant number of children who do not pick up reading. Since we have had decent information, that has varied from 20 per cent up to about 40 per cent, but it has never really dropped below about 20 per cent regardless of how much attention has been given to reading. Very importantly, that 20 per cent always includes some of the most disadvantaged children in our society. That applies at the moment to a lot of schools in England. I know from my international work that it applies to a lot of English-speaking countries right across the world.

Yet we now have a very significant number of schools teaching synthetic phonics alongside comprehension, where year on year very high numbers of children—a percentage in the high 90s, or almost all children—are turning out as effective readers. These are not leafy suburb schools; in fact, they are quite the reverse in most cases. They cover a whole range of schools, including a lot of schools in disadvantaged and challenging areas. Those 20 per cent, which have for so long been failed by the system, are now learning to read alongside all the other children. This is not theory; it is not what I believe; it is what I know. I have been to a lot of these schools myself and if you did not believe me I could take you along to look for yourself.

These schools do not follow a single prescription. They do not all use the same programme or the same materials or books, but they share an understanding that children read most effectively by decoding unknown words rather than guessing at them. When I refer to children reading effectively, I mean that they read with full comprehension and are developing real enthusiasm for books. It is a totally unmerited slur to say that these schools’ teaching of reading is arid and mechanistic. They teach comprehension and vocabulary just as strongly as they do phonics. They have teachers who really share enthusiasm and love for wonderful books and reading. By ensuring that teachers have access to the right sort of information and training, you could be encouraging and supporting a system that would ensure that almost all children in Scotland would learn to read regardless of their background.

Thank you very much for that helpful introduction. In your petition, you indicate that you have written to the Scottish Government, Education Scotland, the Times Educational Supplement (Scotland), and the General Teaching Council for Scotland. Have you received responses from any of those organisations? If so, what sort of feedback have you received?

Yes, I have received responses. I can give you a flavour of them—generally, it has been to say, “Thank you very much but no thank you, we will not be pursuing it any further.” I have a lot of papers here. Jeff Maguire, a senior policy officer, said:

“Our understanding is that almost all Scottish primary schools use some form of synthetic phonics, and that this approach is combined with other strategies in the context of active literacy learning. Schools have a responsibility to respond to the needs of their own pupils.”

For me, however, that is a misunderstanding of what I am trying to achieve here. Yes, most schools in Scotland use some form of phonics, but they also use other strategies alongside it, such as multi-cueing, which amounts to word guessing. They also use sight words and repetitive, predictable reading books. It looks as if children can be in primary 1 and primary 2 and reading well when they are reading those repetitive books, but in effect what has happened is that they are simply memorising the words. In primary 3 or primary 4, once we come away from those repetitive texts, children’s skills can then break down because they do not have enough solid phonics knowledge to attack any new words that they come across.

I have also had a reply from John Swinney. This was very recently, on 9 August 2017. He stated:

“I am not convinced it would be helpful to prescribe one particular approach to teaching reading. It would also contradict the philosophy of Curriculum for Excellence, which empowers teachers to choose the methods best suited to the needs of each child.”

Again, I feel that this shows a misunderstanding. I am not asking for synthetic phonics to be mandated, or for it to be statutory as it is in England. I am simply asking that our teachers are given access to and are informed about the most current international research when it comes to reading. I also have a problem with the idea that synthetic phonics contradicts the philosophy of curriculum for excellence. I wonder whether we should be prioritising the philosophy of a curriculum that, in my eyes, has yet to deliver the goods, so to speak, or teachers’ right to choose from a flawed range of strategies. For me, it is more important that children get the correct research-informed reading instruction and that should not be left to chance.

You stated that other countries are getting better faster than Scotland, particularly in beginning reading instruction. Why do you think that is the case?

As of 2014, in England systematic synthetic phonics has been mandated as the sole method for reading instruction. In Australia, they are trialling the phonics screening check, which originated in England. For a long time, lots of countries have been taking note of the research, which ironically really began in Scotland with the Clackmannanshire research. Other countries seem to be learning the lessons from our research, whereas we have chosen to do nothing and to leave it up to teachers. We have been doing that for the last 12 years and, without having all the information they need, teachers, through no fault of their own, cannot make an informed decision because they are not in possession of all the facts or research. I am very concerned that we are falling behind other countries with our professionalism, our pedagogy.

May I pick up on something that Anne Glennie said? I am absolutely sure that synthetic phonics is not a method of teaching reading. It is something that children need to know in order to be able to do it. There are lots of methods that can be used to learn reading. It is like saying that children need to count in mathematics. Of course, they need to learn to count to be able to do it well, but there are lots and lots of ways of teaching them how to count. That is not a method. Synthetic phonics is the same as learning to count. It is a basic skill that children need, and we know that when they have it, that enables them to read well as long as it is with all the other things. Synthetic phonics is not a restrictive method. Schools can use lots of methods to teach reading. It is content, not method.

Would it be correct to say that synthetic phonics is not a new idea? I seem to remember that it is how I learnt to read, rather a long time ago.

There is an old way of teaching phonics, which has been around quite a long time. The thinking on synthetic phonics has now moved forward considerably from that. It is a much more complete, rounded system than the one that was used, although it has something in common with that, which is why training is so important. The understanding of synthetic phonics has moved forward quite considerably.

10:30  

Closing the attainment gap is very much on the radar of every political party in this Parliament. You state that there is now ample secure and compelling evidence that shows that, if children are taught to read, write and spell using a systematic synthetic phonics approach, the attainment gap and the gender gap can be closed. Could you expand on that a bit further, please?

There are a number of ways in which you can teach children to read. One of them involves encouraging children to use context in order to decipher an unfamiliar word: a child sees a sentence and there is a word that they do not understand and that they cannot read, so they use the context to work that out. A child needs to have good language skills and good vocabulary skills in order to do that effectively. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who typically have weak vocabulary skills, cannot do that.

Another approach to teaching children to read is through sight word recognition, where you show them a whole word and ask them to commit that word to memory and remember what that word is. A lot of children from disadvantaged backgrounds know almost no letter sounds whatsoever when they start school, so the way in which they remember those words is through visual cues. For example, in one school that I went into, children were being taught the words “Biff”, “Chip” and “Floppy”. Children remembered the word “Floppy” because it was printed on the largest card and they remembered the word “Biff” because the last two letters were the same shape. These are just abstract, meaningless symbols to those students, whereas students from more affluent backgrounds who start school with the knowledge of letter sounds might see the words “Biff”, “Chip” and “Floppy” and make the connections between letter sounds and the sight word approach.

A third approach involves phonics. That approach redresses the inequalities in knowledge that exist when children start school because, right from the beginning of instruction, children are taught about the relationship between letters and sounds and are asked to apply that. For example, the first three letter sounds that they are taught might be “a”, “n” and “t” and they might be shown words such as “ant”, “at” or “tan”. They are then shown another letter sound, such as “i”, and learn to read the words that use it—in this case, “pin”, “in”, “it” and so on. What you are creating here is a situation where children from the more disadvantaged backgrounds get that critical letter sound knowledge right at the beginning and you are not teaching children to read by a method that is dependent on vocabulary for good word-reading success. That is the way in which you would be able to close the poverty-related rate-of-attainment gap in word reading. However, obviously, phonics needs to be placed within a curriculum where you are developing children’s oral language skills as well.

In more practical terms, I could take you to hundreds—not thousands but hundreds—of schools where that approach is being used and there is no gap in learning to read between children who get free school meals, children with English as an additional language, white working class boys, children from very difficult estates and children from any other background.

I would like to give you some school statistics from England so that you can compare and contrast what is happening there with what we have in Scotland.

In Elmhurst primary school in east London, 52 per cent of the pupils are disadvantaged and 96 per cent of the intake have English as a second language. However, despite the background and the circumstances of the children, 94 per cent of the children there gain the equivalent of our second level in reading by the end of primary 7. Compare that to our latest figure from teacher judgments, which was 72 per cent. Also, at St George’s primary school, again in east London, 71 per cent of the pupils are disadvantaged and 50 per cent have English as a second language. However, 96 per cent of the pupils—despite background, despite circumstances—manage to achieve reading at a level that will allow them to flourish and access their secondary school curriculum.

I know both of those schools. A good number of the 6 per cent or so who do not read by the end are children who have arrived partway through school.

Put like that, it is quite a compelling case. Thank you.

I am interested in the list of benefits that you believe would be achieved through the actions that you are calling for. I am particularly interested in the idea that you would be able to reduce the number of children being identified as dyslexic. Could you expand on that?

The headteacher at Elmhurst primary school states that, since the introduction of a synthetic phonics programme in 2014, the school has managed to eradicate dyslexia. Some of the schools in which this approach is being used are identifying fewer and fewer children with dyslexia. However, in my current experience, as I travel across Scotland and work with schools and teachers, we appear to be identifying more and more children with dyslexia. What you will find is that the intervention approaches that absolutely work if someone has been identified as dyslexic are actually based on systematic synthetic phonics. What we need to do is take the teaching that works with children who are struggling and apply that to everybody. It is harmful to no one in a class but beneficial to everyone.

There is a neurological condition that is best called dyslexia that I think applies to about 1 or 2 per cent of the population—nowhere near the 20 per cent or so who are labelled as dyslexic at the moment, a lot of whom could be taught to read if they were taught to read properly.

Is that opinion or is that fact? Is that fact you could deliver to—

That is fact. The schools that we are talking about, as Anne Glennie said, have very few dyslexic children because they all read.

Is the fact that you stated—that the actual number of dyslexic people is between 1 and 2 per cent as opposed to 20 per cent—evidence based?

It is evidence based, yes. Those are the ones who you can demonstrate clinically have some sort of neurological developmental condition. For most of the others, the only real diagnosis for them being dyslexic is that they cannot read.

I would be interested to see that data.

I do not have it with me, but we could find you some data on dyslexia.

That would be great. I would really appreciate that.

Remember, it is a controversial area so people’s definition of it can change.

Okay. You also believe that the synthetic phonics approach would allow us to aim for 100 per cent of children reading in Scotland. That suggests that that is not the current aim. Is that correct?

From a research perspective, I believe that synthetic phonics has the potential to improve the literacy skills of children in Scotland. We know that, in relation to children with the most severe reading difficulties, even when they are given an intervention that aligns with best practice, about 10 to 25 per cent still do not respond. They have difficulties that we are not able to remediate, I suppose. Synthetic phonics is not a cure for all literacy problems; it is a way of ensuring that all children achieve better literacy skills and it particularly benefits children from disadvantaged communities. However, you cannot promise 100 per cent.

There will always be a few children who struggle, for good reasons, so 100 per cent is too high, but I think that a figure in the high 90 per cents is totally achievable.

I would like to clarify that I said that we should aim for 100 per cent—I think that we should be aiming for 100 per cent of our children to be able to read. To paraphrase Gordon Askew, we should expect to get very close to that. It will be only in relation to the 2 to 3 per cent of cases with real and severe difficulties that we will be unable to achieve that.

To go back to your question about whether we are already aiming for that, I can give you an illustration of what I am talking about. As part of the raising attainment for all meetings, conferences and so on that took place when Angela Constance was education secretary, teachers and schools were asked to sign up to a commitment that involved stretch aims. One of the stretch aims was for 85 per cent of our children to achieve second level in literacy before leaving primary school. My immediate reaction to that was, what about the 15 per cent? I thought that the policy was called raising attainment for all. If we are serious about raising attainment for all, we need to aim for 100 per cent literacy.

If you know that teaching is being done effectively, it is easier to identify those few children who have real problems.

This approach is being taken in England. You said that you do not want it to be mandatory here. I am interested to know what your perception of the national guidance on training for teachers, support and resources is in this regard. What information do you believe that teachers do not have here already to carry this out?

The current documentation that we have provides a mixed picture, and it is difficult to find real and concrete information. The experiences and outcomes documents, the actual curriculum, the building the curriculum documents that go along with curriculum for excellence and the primary 1 literary assessment and action resource—POLAAR—all present contradictory things in relation to reading. Although it might appear that, at the moment, curriculum for excellence does not prescribe any particular method, the Es and Os documents mention sight vocabulary and context clues and POLAAR mentions letter names, which are all things that are part of a whole-language approach, which is the opposite of what synthetic phonics is. Even though we think that we are not prescribing anything, by including all of these things we are.

What is in the documents can be confusing. The “Curriculum for excellence: literacy and English—principles and practice” paper says:

“Teachers will balance play-based learning with more systematic development and learning of skills and techniques for reading, including phonics.”

However, the “Building the Curriculum 2—Active learning in the early years” document says:

“there is no long-term advantage to children when there is an over-emphasis on systematic teaching before 6 or 7 years of age.”

The actual documentation is therefore not helpful for teachers. Despite the size and scope of the curriculum for excellence documentation—if you are familiar with the green glossy folder, you will know that it is enormous and weighs 6.5 pounds—there are only a couple of lines on actual reading instruction there. We have:

“I explore sounds, letters and words, discovering how they work together”,

then,

“I can use my knowledge of sight vocabulary, phonics, context clues, punctuation and grammar to read with understanding and expression”

and

“I am learning to select and use strategies and resources before I read, and as I read, to help make the meaning of texts clear”

and that is your lot. Despite referring to “strategy” six times, the document does not outline what those strategies are. In many cases, they are being interpreted as multi-cueing strategies. To give you an example—

Sorry, but can I stop you there? Could you answer this specific question: do you think that teachers are informed enough about this? Would they need special training?

Teachers need special training. In the course of my day-to-day work, I regularly speak to audiences of teachers, and, over the past three years, I have started asking every audience for a show of hands. I say, “Please put your hand up if, when you did your teacher training, you were taught how to teach reading”. I said that most recently to a big audience of 72 teachers, and there were three hands up. One of those teachers had trained in South Africa and one had trained at Moray house. I thought that I must have slept in on the day that teaching reading was covered.

I thought that it was a personal problem for me—something that I had missed, something that I lacked—but, through my research and through speaking to teachers, I have discovered that we all lacked access to that information.

When I said that achieving these levels of attainment was possible, I genuinely meant it. I never said that it was easy. It has been a real uphill struggle in England, partly because there is such an extensive need for training, often among the people who provide the training, which makes life difficult. There is also 30 years of ingrained prejudice and conservative thinking among teachers and teacher trainers, who have an anti-phonics attitude that it is not to do with comprehension or enjoyment of books, and that has been hard to deal with and get past.

That is one of the points that I was going to raise. Teachers often complain that they are subjected to too much change in curriculums and teaching methods, and I presume that this would be another change. Do you accept that resources are too stretched at the moment to allow the training of teachers to teach reading?

10:45  

Yes, but we are talking about a change from 20 per cent of children not being able to read to almost all children being able to read. Do some changes not just have to happen? I know that the proposal is not popular with teachers—I know that they do not like it—but we are failing thousands of children who could be given the gift of reading, which opens the door to so many other things educationally and in life opportunities. There is a price, but my opinion is that it is a price that has to be paid.

In your petition you suggest that, if teachers have national guidance to follow, they will be able to adapt their classroom practice accordingly. How would you address the potential concern that having guidance to adhere to would restrict teachers’ professional autonomy?

There are a number of different ways in which synthetic phonics programmes can be delivered. For example, they vary in the number of letter sound mappings that are taught, the speed and pace of delivery, the reading materials that accompany them and in many other ways. It is about teachers understanding synthetic phonics and the specific needs of the students that they are teaching, adjusting the pace of their delivery and the number of letter sound mappings that they teach on the basis of their knowledge of their students. It is about educating teachers in the subject so that they feel confident in adjusting it to suit their classes.

To be honest, I do not think that imposition has worked in England. Those teachers who are teaching synthetic phonics have been persuaded and shown all the evidence on why it works so well. You must remember that teachers are being asked to look at specific content, not at a particular method of delivery. It is what they are teaching, not how they are teaching it, that is important.

Yes. It is interesting that you raise that issue. You have to show them, and they have to engage with it. Is your experience that, once you have shown a teacher synthetic phonics or a teacher has come with knowledge of it, their level of engagement is high and they find synthetic phonics the primary way in which they choose to teach?

I know of no teachers who are doing it well who would want to teach in any other way, because they can see that their children read with understanding, are enthusiastic and love books.

It is about outcomes, ultimately.

Yes, but it is also about finding a way of getting people to understand and winning hearts and minds. The evidence is there, but it is really hard work to get people to look at it.

How long does it take to train a teacher in synthetic phonics?

It can be done in a day.

Yes. I offer professional learning sessions that last for five hours. At the end, teachers feel confident that they understand it enough to be able to deliver it.

It is a challenge, but it is not such a big challenge.

No, it is not.

Two days would be good, I think. A day is possible, but it is pushing it. A day with follow-up might be possible, or two days, but not a few hours.

Then it is professional practice.

Yes.

Thank you very much. That has been really interesting. My recollection is that, pre-2011, the Labour Party had a commission on literacy. It was headed up by Rhona Brankin and it talked about synthetic phonics, which was accepted by the Scottish Government at the time—I think that Mike Russell was the education minister. It is an issue that there has been a conversation on.

I sit on the Education and Skills Committee, which had an evidence session with a group of people who are in initial teacher education. They were concerned about the level of support they had in learning literacy and numeracy. That was very much a concern. It is an issue that people are alive to, and I think that members have found your presentation very interesting.

What should we do in terms of taking the petition forward?

Following your comment about the work that Rhona Brankin’s team did, convener, it is worth pointing out that, in 2010, Mike Russell, who was the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning at the time, said:

“I agree that synthetic phonics has had considerable success.”—[Official Report, 7 January 2010; c 22562.]

If synthetic phonics was considered to have had considerable success way back in 2010, why has it not moved forward and become more commonplace?

The petitioners have made a very compelling case for synthetic phonics, particularly with regard to the evidence that children from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit from it. I think that we need to go back to the Scottish Government and ask what its current view is. We should also seek the opinion of the Educational Institute of Scotland and the GTC in Scotland.

The opinions of the EIS, the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers and other unions would also be useful.

If we write to the Scottish Government, we will get a generic response, and the petitioner has indicated that she has already received a response from the cabinet secretary. If we are going to ask the question, perhaps we should ask it in reference to those comments from 2010.

Yes, and we could include in the letter the evidence that we have heard today about there being a particular benefit to children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Could we also ask for the evidence against using and embedding synthetic phonics? There seems to be a suggestion that there is resistance from the cabinet secretary, and I would like to know what that is based on.

The argument seems to be about autonomy in curriculum for excellence. However, that is autonomy in the context of professional responsibility and understanding; it is not completely random in that it allows teachers to do whatever they like, and I do not think any teacher would argue that that is what autonomy means. It feels as though the cabinet secretary’s letter suggests that, but we can always explore that issue.

There is also the issue—it was briefly mentioned by the petitioners—that, if those who deliver teacher training do not know how to do synthetic phonics, they cannot teach it. Some resistance might come from that. I think that we should explore that with the cabinet secretary as well.

Could I respectfully make a suggestion, convener? It might not be your way forward, but it might be for the future. Dissemination of good practice is more effective than imposing something on people. You might identify people who are already using synthetic phonics well and get them to share their practice with other schools, so that the practice is communicated from school to school rather than from the top down.

The issue is partly about confidence. I am struck by the fact that we now have a strategy for teaching children to learn reading that enhances the opportunities for those who are already advantaged because they have those skills—a mechanistic approach that affords the opportunity to learn from the other stuff. I find it compelling that we have strategies that are based on existing success, not on understanding the disadvantage that some young people face.

I do not know whether there are other educationalists in Scotland, particularly in the colleges and universities, who are providing initial teacher education and who have a view on the matter. That may be something else that we could explore.

Thank you very much for your attendance today. That was a very interesting evidence session, and it will be useful to explore why there are concerns about something that appears logical. I think that that is how we would want to take the petition forward.

10:53 Meeting suspended.  

10:55 On resuming—