We are grateful to have received this testimonial below provided by the Headteacher of a primary school in Wales, UK – January 2025:
‘After deciding to focus on improving phonics and reading to ensure that all children are able to access texts at a proficient level, we have been using No Nonsense Phonics as an intervention activity within our junior classes. Initially, around one third of our junior children were in need of this intervention, but as the programme progressed, this reduced to less than 1% within nine months – a high success rate! As a result of its effectiveness so far, we are now moving this programme into our Year 2 class as a whole class teaching tool, with a view to extending this across the whole school. The beauty of the programme is that it just doesn’t just address phonological development but also develops wider reading skills to ensure that children become skilled at reading and understanding texts.‘
Mrs S A Watts
Headteacher – Ysgol Tycroes
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Debbie describes some back-story: Although the No Nonsense Phonics programme is completely suitable for mainstream provision, back in 2017 we decided to introduce the new No Nonsense Phonics materials for ‘targeted support’ and ‘intervention’ initially. This was because in England’s context, virtually all early years, infant and primary schools had already established their preferred ‘systematic synthetic phonics’ programmes and practices based on the Simple View of Reading model (Gough and Tunmer, 1986) recommended by Sir Jim Rose in his independent review of early reading instruction in 2006. In 2007, many schools adopted the resource-less ‘Letters and Sounds‘ (DfES 2007) programme because of its official status – despite the fact it was resource-less (I wouldn’t even qualify it as a ‘programme’). Understandably, perhaps, many headteachers also considered that ‘Ofsted will want to see it’ (Ofsted is England’s inspectorate) and so ‘Letters and Sounds‘ (DfES, 2007) was adopted widely across England – and its use even spread across the world!
Some schools managed to translate the guidance and suggestions in ‘Letters and Sounds‘ to very good effect, but not so many others. This is why in 2020 the, then, Minister for School Standards Nick Gibb, agreed to replace the governmental ‘programme’ with an official ‘reading framework’ and archive the resource-less ‘Letters and Sounds‘ publication. ‘The reading framework’ (2021) published by England’s Department for Education was originally my idea (although I had a much simpler publication in mind).
Having adopted SSP programmes, many schools still have children who did not, and do not, ‘meet or exceed’ the benchmark (32 out of 40 words read correctly or plausibly) of England’s statutory Year One Phonics Screening Check (introduced in 2012). Many teachers didn’t, and don’t, understand at least some of the causes of children’s struggles with recalling the letter/s-sound correspondences of the complex English alphabetic code and applying the phonics skills and their sub-skills. One basic cause is what I refer to as widespread ‘impoverished phonics provision’ – and phonics practices and content which could be much better still if teachers were more aware of what this ‘can look like for each and every child’.
The danger continues that teachers attribute poor decoding (and therefore poor phonics screening check results) to ‘within child‘ issues.
There is insufficient professional knowledge and understanding of how to evaluate and compare programmes and practices. I provide an example of this in my partial critique of the ‘pedagogy’ of the widely-spreading ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised‘ programme which has spread rapidly in England’s schools. This wide scale adoption is unwarranted I suggest – although understandable for schools that had originally adopted ‘Letters and Sounds‘ to simply replace this with the ‘Little Wandle‘ programme as it is described in its full title as ‘Letters and Sounds Revised‘ and was initially funded by the Department for Education to replace the resource-less ‘Letters and Sounds‘. The highly-flawed pedagogy underpinning ‘Little Wandle‘ is “strictly no worksheets or workbooks” which I contend is ridiculous, unwarranted, and misguided.
Arguably (and with evidence), the promotion of ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised‘ has not only been partially funded by the DfE, but also favoured by the DfE in various ways – including prominence in the DfE ‘English Hubs’ initiative.
A number of schools in England (and in other countries) have initially adopted the No Nonsense Phonics materials for intervention and targeted support – but on seeing that their slowest-to-learn children engaged so well, and learnt so effectively, with their No Nonsense Phonics Skills Pupil Books, they went on to realise it would be beneficial for all children to use these materials as their initial and mainstream provision.
The teaching profession in Wales has not been given the same official guidance for reading and spelling instruction as in England. This is not to say that schools in Wales haven’t adopted ‘systematic synthetic phonics’ programmes and practices – many have – thankfully, such as in the primary school led by Headteacher Mrs Watts.
