Saturday 7 April 2012

Commenting on the NUT’s survey of members into the introduction of the Year One Phonics Screening Check, Christine Blower General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, the largest teachers union said:

‘Despite the fact that the vast majority of teachers felt the Year One Phonics Screening Check  provided no additional or useful information, used up valuable teaching time, was a waste of money and was inappropriate and unnecessary, the Government plans to go ahead and introduce it.

“Michael Gove yet again is riding roughshod over the views of the teaching profession. It is absolutely essential that the love and enthusiasm for reading is instilled in children at the earliest possible age. The Year One Phonics Screening Check results which will be reported to parents as simply a pass or fail score, for five and six year olds, is nothing short of shameful.  This test has nothing to do with improving children’s reading enjoyment or comprehension skills.  It is simply a decoding check to ensure that schools are following the Government’s ideology on phonics. 

“The Government needs to adopt the NUT’s Reading for Pleasure approach and support schools in teaching reading through a range of methods which are appropriate for individual children, only one of which is synthetic phonics”.