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The future of Letters and Sounds

Hi All,

I want to share something with you all that I feel is quite important in terms of children learning to read and spell.


Over the last 18 months, I have worked tirelessly with schools to strengthen their approach to Letters & Sounds to ensure all children can become readers. Over the months, it became clear to me that the 2007 version was no longer fit for purpose due to the amount of work we had to put in to make it better. There is no wonder that it has significant shortfalls and is no longer effective in many schools. Firstly, it was guidance written in 2007 and in the last 10 years has been neglected in terms of training. I have lost count of the schools, using L&S, I have visited where they have staff teaching phonics with no L&S specific training. Importantly, this is then amplified as the headteacher and senior leaders are often not trained in it so aren't in a strong place to challenge what they see. I need to make it clear that this is through no fault of their own. The 'official' training finished with the National Strategies and has only just been relaunched through the English Hub Programme.

As an approach to phonics, L&S had lots of gaps and we found that schools needed clear direction about many aspects, however, I soon realised that this would not be sustainable. For example, if I was no longer around, who would drive the approach that we created? This idea is mirrored across many schools I visit: A phonics leader will have created an approach to L&S in school and then moved on. Over time, it then no longer looks like the original version and has often moved away from what L&S recommended. Also, I've often found that there are resemblances to past school improvement priorities and 'fads' within the L&S practice I see. E.g. Children needing to move around a hall/space to read a word on the wall. The approach is flawed, results in limited teaching and quality practice by the children and often allows some children (like me when I was young) to simply use it as an opportunity to cause a little mischief. Often, it is also sporadic and not part of a smooth and rigourous approach throughout the school. Therefore, creating a bumpy approach to the reading journey which is already difficult for lots of children.


After some reflection, I knew that there would be experts out there who know more than me and would have already done this work by shaping their own SSP Programmes. Essentially, I was happy with the impact of work strengthening L&S in schools but knew we could do better.


I reached out to Debbie Hepplewhite MBE and shared my concerns and challenges. As a result, I have built up a wonderful relationship with her and further developed my knowledge and understanding of other programmes, particularly her No Nonsense Phonics Skills and Phonics International. Both of these bodies of work are far more comprehensive than our L&S version and will make a significant difference in schools. Therefore, my focus now is to advise and support our trust L&S schools to transition to these, thus moving away from the 2007 L&S approach. By doing this, we will be the first organisation to put these programmes in place at a large scale. As a result of this, I am absolutely confident that we will then see the results that make others sit up and consider what we have done. More importantly, the trust approach to phonics will be far more effective and will result in far greater numbers of children becoming successful readers and writers.


Whilst working with Debbie, I continued to be an accredited L&S trainer and had early access to some information about the future of L&S. Whilst being optimistic initially, I soon became sceptical about the plans. I won’t go into detail about those concerns but I did openly share them with the DfE through various avenues. I was fortunate enough to see the revised proposal and was asked for my feedback. The feedback I sent was quite challenging as I felt the revised L&S was flawed in many ways. Especially, as it would not stand up against NNPS and PI in terms of resources and depth. I found it invigorating that I was asked to provide this feedback but I was also sceptical about how much of it would be listened to.


However…..just this morning, I was sent an email from the DfE. I couldn’t believe what I was reading! Not in a bad way. It was absolute music to my ears. There has been a significant u-turn which can’t have been easy to do. The DfE was a long way down the road with rewriting the L&S progression and to put a halt on it would have been a real challenge. Furthermore, the two English Hubs that have worked tirelessly to create a new L&S programme, also had to be considered. The email basically says: Good-bye to the 2007 L&S- Now pick a suitable validated SSP Programme. The DfE are fully aware of the limitations of schools following the 2007 L&S. Yes there are schools getting great results with it, but there are also lots of schools out there getting it wrong.


I’m not saying my feedback was significant in this, but I will have certainly contributed to the discussion. It is more likely that my concerns supplemented those from others enough to build up wide concern. Anyway, whilst there will still be questions for the schools I work with, there is also an amazing opportunity in front of us.


Let’s look again at how we teach children to read and spell, and do something about it. Children can learn a code and blend it to read and segment it to spell. They are capable of far more than we have allowed them to show. Let us crack on and sort it!


Thank you for listening to my ramblings. I would love to hear your thoughts.


Carl Pattison


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