Phonics testing for 5 & 6 year olds

I wrote last night about plans to introduce reading tests for children in Wales. It has since been pointed out to me that there are also plans to introduce a phonics test for five and six year olds in England. Last week 10,000 pupils took part in a screening  trial which required them to read aloud a list of twenty words and ‘non-words’ to a teacher (the non-words were included to measure the  child’s decoding skills and to ensure  that they are not simply repeating words they have previously learnt).

The test lasts approximately five to ten minutes per pupil. When they are eventually rolled out nationwide the results for each child will be passed on to parents and the collective school results will be tracked by the Department for Education. They will not be published in league tables but national and local authority results will be reported and individual school results will be available to OFSTED and the general public on the RaiseOnline website.

These plans are very small scale in comparison to the reading test set to be introduced in Wales. On the face of it they do not seem to be too arduous, pressured or time consuming. However, there are question marks over whether they need to be administered and recorded in such a rigorous and formal way. Apart from the significant costs involved there is a danger that they could distort the curriculum with schools focusing too much on phonics to the detriment of other literacy skills.

These are concerns shared by the Association for the Professional Development of Early Years Education (TACTYC) which has launched a petition against phonics testing. The petition (which has already attracted over a thousand signatures) can be accessed here.