Debbie: This is a really sad post – very dismaying… in so many ways…
‘Out of the blue’, a teacher in a school in England just sent me an email with nothing less than a message that is a cry from the heart – an appeal for help.
Sadly, I am unable to help her, or the school, directly – but I have spoken to the teacher, and passed on her experience to others including the publishers of the Floppy’s Phonics programme: Oxford University Press.
Oxford University Press has received other reports of the undermining of Floppy’s Phonics by various advisors – and the over-promotion and unwarranted spread of the ‘Little Wandle‘ programme which has grown enormously in England’s context. OUP has reported various examples to the Department for Education (DfE) over the years and currently. In fact, unsatisfactory, unaccountable practices of misinformation and undermining of Floppy’s Phonics, and other programmes, has always been the case. I myself informed the DfE of some examples a number of years ago – complete with direct ‘evidence’. You see, this is not the first time that distraught and frustrated teachers have approached me. And this is not the first time that a school is already equipped with all the requisite resources of Floppy’s Phonics only to be ‘told’ they must change to another programme. I remember two schools in Scotland had literally ‘just’ spent thousands of pounds on resources only to be instructed to change to ‘another’ regionally promoted programme. My booked training, in those instances, simply had to be cancelled. But the irony is, regional advisors should, arguably, be professionally curious enough to appreciate that regional schools using different phonics programmes will provide ‘control groups’ so that comparisons can be made of a range of outcomes – for example, from how ‘supportive’ and easy-to-use the various programmes really are, to outcomes in phonics, vocabulary enrichment, reading (comprehension and fluency), spelling, handwriting. And just how well are parents informed and engaged?
Be in no doubt, Floppy’s Phonics is probably one of the best phonics programmes in the world. ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised ‘ is not.
The teacher who just wrote to me has given me permission to post her critique of ‘Little Wandle‘ as sent to me in her very first (unsolicited) email. Her description of her thoughts match my own, so I was not surprised to read her observations. What is surprising (AND NOT GOOD ENOUGH) is that the ‘validators’ of the DfE were not apparently able to identify differences, in real life terms for teachers and children, and whether those differences would make a difference to lived experience and outcomes.
In September 2024, I wrote a ‘partial critique’ of the ‘Little Wandle’ programme. A visit to my ‘partial critique’ will show that there is a HUGE HOLE in the Little Wandle provision. Bear in mind, I’ve spent many years promoting the need for content-rich, paper-based resources for each and every learner to apply themselves according to their own capacity before the adult goes through the content with the children; to have a daily record of content and progress; to get a sense of their own learning; to share with ‘home’ routinely; to enable constant, accountable, transparent ‘formative assessment’ shared with all stakeholders for multi-purposes; to enable content-rich, routine ‘revisit and review’ – and so much more.
This is the teacher’s review of ‘Little Wandle’ verbatim – but I promised this would be ‘anonymous’ so I’ve deleted references to any people, organisation or locations:
“Hello Debbie,
I’ve loved teaching phonics through your well crafted Floppy’s Phonics scheme. I’ve been teaching 26 years and before that was a nursery nurse for 5 years. 22 of my class teaching years have been in Year 1. I administered the very first Phonics Check in 2012. Thank you for the joy you have brought to so many children and to my teaching of Phonics and early reading. But, now I need your help as we are being forced into changing to Little Wandle and I believe it is flawed in so many ways. My teaching experience and professionalism is being ignored. Floppy’s Phonics is seen as old fashioned and dated and as a 55 year old teacher, so am I.
Over the last 10 years we had pass rate percentages from 86-90% when schools around us were averaging 50-60%. Our demographic has changed and especially after COVID, we saw 76%. I’ve always championed Floppy’s Phonics and believe lower scores are down to a mixture of lower ability cohorts (who have worked their socks off and made excellent progress but fell just short some children scoring 28,29,31) higher % of EAL (I teach in —————— and SEND children and the pressure in Year 1 to record History, Geography and Science in depth in 3 separate books rather than the combined topic books due to the demand of the OFSTED deep dives leaving less time to hold guided reading sessions.
A couple of years ago, I saw a gap in Floppy’s Phonics and got in touch with the Editor and worked with the graphics department to create the Level 5 sound mats which now appear on the subscription website to download.
However, since Little Wandle appeared, I have come under increasing pressure to change from Floppy’s Phonics. We have had pressure from the Education Director ——————- and headteachers within the Trust who carry out review days to move away from Floppy’s. The English Hub believe Floppy’s Phonics is in danger of being struck off the Government’s recommended phonics list and therefore will not give us money to further invest in the scheme. I did contact the Senior Editor who confirmed Floppy’s Phonics remains a complete and robust systematic synthetic Phonics Scheme which isn’t due to be dropped from the list. There’s money if we change but that had a deadline so we quickly looked at schemes and Little Wandle did best against a poor list of rivals and is still found lacking when pitched against Floppy’s Phonics scheme.
Little Wandle is death by flash cards, dry boring lessons, most phase 5 do not have a picture so outside the lesson it is hard for the children to distinguish which grapheme to use within their writing e.g. with Floppy’s Phonics children will ask “Is it s for whistle or s for dance?” There is no opportunity to apply and practise writing graphemes as there are no booklets or worksheets. I’ve seen videos of teachers organising and juggling flashcards per lesson when Floppy’s words are included on the screen. There’s no engaging picture hook at the start of the lesson to see and hear phonemes in context. No opportunity to see physical blending and segmenting. When I use the smartboard, I can write words which the children suggest with alternative spellings and explore them. Floppy’s challenge children to choose the alternative grapheme when segmenting and blending on screen. The Collins Rep said for the 3 reads a week “schools flood KS1 and Foundation with KS2 staff” We are a one form entry school with few staff and little break out space. Couldn’t even flood a paddling pool with the few KS2 support staff we have! I even noticed mistakes on the Little Wandle example Reception planning I randomly selected to view this morning – oral blending c r ow d z s p ear z s t or m z I would say vocalising a strong z instead of a soft s is wrong (my accent ———– – I live in ———————————–)
We’ve ordered the Little Wandle resources but I’ve just sent a long email to head and staff about why we should cancel this and stay with Floppy’s Phonics. We are on our 2nd week of Spring bank holiday at the moment and I feel helpless. I don’t know how you can help me but I feel I need the Phonics Guru’s weight backing my case to stay.
To use a Star Wars the reference Princess Leia asking help from Obi-Wan Kenobi…
Help me Debbie Hepplewhite, you’re my only hope!”
Debbie: The truth is we’re swimming against the tide and people are simply presenting as incapable of ‘evaluating and comparing’ programmes and the lived experiences of the teachers, the children and the children’s parents and carers. And what may disguise important differences between phonics programmes is the fact that even poor, flawed and impoverished phonics programmes and provision will still teach many children to read well enough as the provision is based on introducing the English alphabetic code systematically and cumulatively. What this will disguise, however, is the struggles of the weakest and slowest learners. Their struggles will inevitably be attributed to the ‘within child’ difficulties because teachers can all claim they are ‘doing’ DfE- validated systematic synthetic phonics programmes of which there are 45. But they are not all ‘equal’ or equally good – at all. And this state of affairs is nothing short of outrageous, untrue, and Oxford University Press has taken this up with the Department for Education – the teacher wrote: “The English Hub believe Floppy’s Phonics is in danger of being struck off the Government’s recommended phonics list and therefore will not give us money to further invest in the scheme.”
The DfE has confirmed this is untrue. We’ve made it clear that the DfE must raise this issue with all the English Hubs. It’s looking like nowadays no-one in positions of authority can be trusted to do their jobs well enough, professionally enough, or accountably. This is certainly what I have experienced with the DfE and the ‘validators’.
This teacher told me that 96% to 100% of her current cohort of Year One children are predicted to reach or exceed the benchmark in the 2026 Year One Phonics Screening Check. And that is with two years of the Floppy’s Phonics programme (in Reception and Year One) supporting teaching and the children’s learning. So what is the actual justification in these circumstances of changing phonics programmes including all the unnecessary cost this will entail for the public purse?
PLEASE NOTE: It is malicious gossip that Floppy’s Phonics is going to be dropped from the DfE-validation list. IT IS NOT TRUE. Goodness only knows who starts these rumours. I suppose it could be a sign of some subjective bias, or even a deliberate rumour to promote the use of competitor programmes. Would we be surprised? With regard to Floppy’s Phonics being ‘old-fashioned’, it is actually tried and tested with its longevity. I designed it with a wonderful small team at Oxford University Press to update the extremely popular ‘Oxford Reading Tree‘ series with a research-informed, and practice-informed, phonics programme (Phonics International is the ‘mother’ of Floppy’s Phonics as I already had enormous experience and professional knowledge and understanding in the field of teaching, foundational literacy and programme and resource-design). I felt very honoured to be afforded the opportunity to work with OUP. Floppy’s Phonics has a superb range of content-rich, gloriously illustrated resources beyond many if not all programmes including an interactive teaching and learning platform for developing language comprehension around the ORT characters and storylines, and introducing the alphabetic code and phonics skills and sub-skills for reading, spelling and writing via the fabulous ORT illustrations. There are superb little glossy teaching and learning books to run alongside use of the online, interactive platform. There are other core resources (of course) such as the overview Alphabetic Code Chart, the Alphabet Poster, the Helpful Words Poster, Flash Cards, Sounds Mats, Frieze Strips per little glossy teaching and learning book. There are paper-based, core Activity Sheets and Cumulative Texts – photocopiable or available as ‘Activity Books’. There are cumulative, decodable reading books. All of this is underpinned by my ‘Two-pronged systematic AND incidental phonics teaching and learning‘. What’s not to like and what could be more supportive for effective teaching and learning – and informing ‘home’?
We’ll have to see how this story unfolds…
See HERE for earlier posts/reviews featuring another ‘out of the blue’ message (but not a ‘cry from the heart’) that features the efficacy of the Floppy’s Phonics programme.
UPDATE June 2026:
Debbie: I’ve heard back from the teacher (above) with further developments, and with permission here is a description of her news thus far:
“Aww Debbie,
It’s with a heavy heart I’m writing to say I lost the fight! I did my very best. Last week I spoke to people in all Key Stages individually, in groups and then at the staff meeting. I compiled and presented evidence but there was no going back and the Little Wandle resources arrived in school.
I’ve been like a woman possessed (even more than usual!) The amount of times I’ve thrust my evidence in front of people and I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve blocked their way or trapped them in my classroom and not let them go until they’ve admitted they can’t say candle, parcel, bottle, hospital and pencil with a /l/ and not an /ul/ and ducks without /ks/!! At the moment, most people agree with my points especially my amazing TA ———— who has supported me and the children through Phonics lessons, interventions and PSCs for the last 10 years or more, the deputy who has worked with me for the last 26 years, my job share. Senior management believe that LW is in so many schools therefore it must work and we comply until proved otherwise. I’m attaching my supporting evidence for your interest! I will never give up challenging LW. It is flawed. I will keep going to the Head and I will question the fundamentals of LW practice as they arise and how we are supposed to teach children and also support our EAL parents without reference pictures, missing code and incorrect code.
We scored our highest ever on the PSC with 96%. So pleased we’re finishing on a high. Take a bow, Floppy. (oh, that just made me fill up!)
To the comment the Head said that I can’t just say it’s down to the cohort of which this year’s is strong and 5 less than usual, I also pointed out that the 2 years we dipped, we had been forced to ditch our topic books and introduce 3 separate History, Geography and Science books to fill in the same way as Year 6 for OFSTED deep dives into subjects. Our guided reading suffered as something had to give whilst teaching and recording a huge volume of unnecessary paperwork. I’ve always said we teach too much depth of foundation subjects and we should be reading, reading, reading.
As part of our revision day on the first Monday back after the 2 weeks holiday and whilst the children were drinking their milk, I put on the YouTube clip of a teacher teaching LW. I asked after, would they like to do flashcards every day in phonics or Floppy’s Phonics with the picture and screen. 1 child voted flashcards (ironically the one who failed PSC with 30/40 and support with homework is hit and miss!) and the rest voted Floppy’s Phonics. They said they like the screen, seeing a picture and hearing the sounds, segmenting and choosing the grapheme.
I don’t know how I can teach without a full alphabetic code, no pictures for reference and juggling flashcards. All that I love about teaching phonics will be replaced with dull, boring flashcards. I will want to add the missing graphemes on the code – see attached Grow the Code and the Complete Code I doctored as part of my evidence pack or as I am calling it the Not So Complete Code (they cover the phonemes so why don’t all the graphemes appear on the code?!) I feel I want to make grapheme cards by snipping parts of their mnemonics cards and creating pictures from clipart for the majority of cards which have just a word on the back, as a way to distinguish and as a point of reference just like ours. ‘Which s is it Mrs ………?’ ‘It was the s for whistle but now it is the ST or st one!’ (name of letters and 2 phonics fingers/sound buttons just to confuse you!!)
At least the Head agrees, keep guided reading books in school and send out our beautiful books we bought 4 years ago for home readers! Did I tell you after 2 years of LW, my sister’s 2 form entry school is complaining to the publisher that the quality of the reading books isn’t good? Apparently the staples are quite short and pages fall out, a sizable problem, big enough to report. They’ve never had an issue with reading books in the past from that company or any other.
We had our LW welcome zoom last night after school. The emphasis is on 3, 20 minute reads a week and daily catch up. I can’t see how we can sustain that with so little staff. We opened the resources after and I pointed out again the missing graphemes and compared our Floppy’s Phonics cards to theirs and how I’ll have to make picture cards as the children have no point of reference. Their cards are too big and flimsy, Floppy’s are better quality, good size and sturdy! I pointed to the f on their code and said to everyone that a child asked me for the spelling of ‘laugh’ and was able to say ‘it’s the f for ‘cough’ which I won’t be able to say in future and can’t even point to it on their code as it’s not even featured on the chart!!
I keep thinking of what I’m going to miss, the joy and excitement of what picture we will see today, the characters and the adventures they got up to, the ease of identifying graphemes and phonemes, the working out which grapheme we need to slide into place and the recording in our activity books.
I’m not throwing anything out!!!!!
Thanks Debbie for over 30 years of happy memories of teaching phonics in my 2 primary schools and listening to my own children, …….. and ……….., learning to read with Floppy’s Phonics and Oxford Reading Tree home reading books.
I’ll keep you updated!
Best wishes,”
Debbie: [I added the link in the teacher’s message immediately above – to the short video of Charlotte Raby sorting out a week’s Flash Cards. There is nothing like this practice in Floppy’s Phonics‘.]
And then I had this further message from the teacher:
“Hi Debbie,
You are welcome to use anything that might be helpful. The attachments were really to show my Head and colleagues and to back up my initial thoughts and observations before starting LW ………
The proof will be in the pudding! Although, I can’t see myself teaching Phonics without a full code and no pictures which makes me feel I’ll have to make some! 2 colleagues said today can’t we keep ours up on the walls as well as LW chart? One of our lovely teaching assistants asked ‘Can’t we just keep what we have and read more, surely that would be better?’
I think it’s incredible that most people out there can’t see it for themselves and blindly follow the crowd! Makes me wonder how on earth they taught phonics before they changed to LW! I was determined to go to the Governors but they have no idea either and if 5000+ worth of headteachers, staff, governors, directors of MATs and English hubs support LW, no one’s going to listen to me.
I still want to use FP’s screen, sound mats and grapheme cards. My argument would be we can’t have fidelity to a scheme which does not provide the complete package and until LW addresses that, I will be filling in the gaps. That means results won’t be a true test/comparison, although, could it be a true comparison when children will read 3 times a week for 20 mins on top of phonics? The LW welcome meeting chap used the phrase ‘flood KS1 with KS2 teachers’ again and that reading has to come before anything else.
Watch this space! I’ll keep you posted!”
Debbie: It’s looking like this will be an on-going conversation with the teacher above. She provided me with various attachments including a further comparative critique of some differences between Floppy’s Phonics provision and the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. Meanwhile, after a year in Reception and most of the following year, 96% of the 2026 cohort of children reached or exceeded the 32 out of 40 words read correctly (or plausibly in the case of the 20 pseudo words) in England’s statutory Year One Phonics Screening Check (PSC).
When you consider that Floppy’s Phonics is established in this school, that other members of staff are happily calling upon its underpinning approach and various programme-specific resources; that a big investment in time and money has already taken place; that the phonics check results are good year on year (above national average or way above national average); that the experienced Year One teacher has readily been able to review the Little Wandle content and approach compared to Floppy’s Phonics (pros and cons, although no discernible ‘pros’ whatsoever with Little Wandle); that the Reception class having experienced a year of the Floppy’s Phonics programme may well be made to ‘change’ to the Little Wandle provision and mnemonic system, routines and way of doing things; that the Year One teacher is already describing how she will want to adapt, add-to, or change various aspects of Little Wandle that she identifies as lacking or not as well-designed… then this scenario suggests that there is no sense whatsoever in the imposition/enforcement –of another phonics programme and, indeed, the additional funding and additional time and effort involved with this change, plus the scrapping/waste of existing phonics resources and reading books, and risking the change of practice for the current Reception children, then this IS UNWARRANTED, UNACCOUNTABLE AND… A TRAVESTY.
And, not least, this is a classic example of tax-payers’ money, in effect, being wasted across England – and a clear example of the deep lack of knowledge and nouse of so many people IN AUTHORITY in the education profession.
I despair – and I am very sad for the children and staff at this school and any other schools where this type of unwarranted and MISGUIDED take-over is happening through sheer myth about Little Wandle‘s efficacy with the scale of its take-over in England implying it is a superior phonics programme.
IT IS NOT.
Please note what the teacher wrote in one of her messages: “Senior management believe that LW is in so many schools therefore it must work and we comply until proved otherwise.”
THIS IS NO LESS THAN BLIND FAITH EVEN WHEN A TEACHER CAN SO STRONGLY PROVIDE A THOROUGH COMPARATIVE CRITIQUE.
Developments in life can go backwards, new things are not guaranteed to be improvements.