Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how his Department plans to quantify the results of the systematic synthetic phonics programmes.

The department is continuing to deliver year on year, real terms per pupil increases, investing a further £4.7 billion by the 2024-25 financial year for the core schools budget, over and above the Spending Review 2019 settlement for schools in the 2022-23 financial year. Since 2010, the government has prioritised the effective teaching of phonics by placing it at the heart of the curriculum and providing £23.7 million of matched funding for resources and training for 14,000 schools between 2011 and 2013. In 2018, we launched a £26.3 million English hubs programme dedicated to improving the teaching of reading. We have since invested a further £17 million in this school-to-school improvement programme, which focusses on systematic synthetic phonics (SSP), early language, and reading for pleasure.

For the academic year 2021/22, the department has launched the Accelerator Fund, which is providing funding to scale up existing effective programmes in schools to support education recovery. As part of the Accelerator Fund, £5 million has been allocated to the English hubs programme to allow hubs to fund eligible schools to purchase complete SSP programmes from the department’s validated list, including their associated training and resources.

Monitoring and assessment is key to effective teaching of early reading, particularly for pupils with reading difficulties. The department’s validation of SSP programmes is a mechanism to support schools to be able to select a high-quality SSP programme. Programmes featured on the validated list have been assessed by an independent panel and are judged to have a sufficiently robust system for the effective monitoring and assessment of pupil progress, and for ensuring all children keep up.

The department mandates a national screening test at the end of year one. This is the phonics screening check which was introduced in 2012 to check how may children are on track with decoding.

Schools can use their phonics screening check data to measure the impact of their chosen SSP programme.

In July 2021, the department published ‘The reading framework: teaching the foundations of literacy’. This is non-statutory guidance for teachers and school leaders, aimed at improving the teaching of the foundations of reading in primary schools by defining best practice. It aims to support schools to meet existing expectations on early reading, as set out in the national curriculum, the early years foundation stage statutory framework and the Ofsted education inspection framework. The reading framework articulates how SSP is an essential element of the teaching of reading and includes guidance for choosing a phonics programme.

The department published an update to its list of high-quality phonics programmes on 16 December 2021. Programmes on this list meet all the department’s criteria for an effective SSP. Schools and headteachers are encouraged to consider the full range of validated SSP programmes before deciding what will best support their children’s rapid progress in reading.

English hubs can offer impartial support with choosing an SSP programme to eligible schools.