Phonics publishers’ joy as government steps back from Letters and Sounds

Educational publishers have welcomed the UK government’s announcement that it will not develop a full programme arounds its Letters and Sounds handbook, which comes after lobbying from the sector.

Letters and Sounds is a systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) manual published by the Department for Education & Skills in 2007 as part of its drive to improve literacy. It is now used in around 70% of primary schools, according to Chris Jolly of Jolly Phonics, but literacy has stalled because of the lack of resources provided to go alongside it.

“Letters and Sounds has no classroom resources, just a manual telling people what to do. The government didn’t understand the publishing process. It’s about providing well-crafted materials in a competitive environment. It just wasn’t effective,” Jolly said. And yet Letters and Sounds was often seen as being the government-endorsed method of teaching reading, he added.

Debbie Hepplewhite from Phonics International said teachers were relying on free resources for their phonics provision. “When teachers make Letters and Sounds into a programme, they turn to free resources on the internet that are not validated by the Department for Education… Some teachers can turn that into a good diet for all children, so a Letters and Sounds school could do a really good job [with literacy]—but others haven’t.”

Hepplewhite said literacy rates stalled between 2016-19, when around 82% of children reached or exceeded the statutory phonics check at the end of Year One, meaning nearly six out of 30 children were not reaching the desired level of literacy.

The U-turn
The government had considered developing an “order of progression” to address the issues with Letters and Sounds, and said in an announcement on 30th March that “the department recognises that for many schools, especially those who want to improve their practice, 2007 Letters and Sounds is not fit for purpose and does not provide the support guidance, resources or training needed”. It also said it has, after careful consideration, decided not to publish a full Letters and Sounds programme, nor an updated progression.

This decision has been welcomed by publishers such as Andrea Quincey, director of the Primary Literacy Education division at OUP, who said there had been “a lot of lobbying” against publishing a new progression. There is now more opportunity for phonics providers than there has been for 15 years, she said.

Quincey said a revised Letters and Sounds would not have solved the problem of poor practice but would have killed any opportunity for publishers.

Jolly added: “This whole thing puts a marker down for the limits of government engagement in driving change in education. There is a role for government in providing frameworks, but the actual programmes of study is not the remit of government. Considering so many countries follow what happens in the UK, this will have a profound effect.”

The wider impact
Jolly Learning is used in classrooms in more than 120 countries worldwide, and Jolly said parents and international schools will no longer look to Letters and Sounds. “This is good news for schools, it’s good for publishers and it’s good for distributors, including bookshops,” he said.

Later this year, the government is expected to publish an early reading framework, which will be a non-statutory guidance document to support the foundations of reading. It is also asking anyone who is creating phonics programmes around the Letters and Sounds manual to apply for them to be validated. Applications can be submitted now and will be reviewed in June, November and March.