Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what weight Ofsted inspectors give to whether a school uses a systematic synthetic phonics programme validated by her Department when assessing the quality of the teaching of phonics; and how Ofsted assesses the quality of phonics teaching in schools that do not use a validated programme.

These are matters for His Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman. I have asked her to write to the hon. Member for Twickenham directly and a copy of her reply will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.