Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of the University of Florida's phonics programme.

High and rising school standards, with excellent foundations in reading, writing and mathematics, are at the heart of the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every child the best start in life. The last Labour government’s promotion of phonics greatly improved the reading and writing abilities of a generation of children.

The department has not made an assessment of the University of Florida’s phonics programme, but the government has published a list of 45 validated phonics programmes. The full list can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/choosing-a-phonics-teaching-programme/list-of-phonics-teaching-programmes.

The department’s list of validated, high quality phonics programmes aims to help schools to select programmes that provide the support, guidance, resources and training needed to teach systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) well.

There is no statutory requirement for schools to choose one of the SPP programmes on the department’s validated list. However, validation indicates that a programme has been assessed by a small panel with relevant expertise that considers it meets all the department’s criteria for an effective SSP programme.

There are currently no further validation rounds planned.