I found the thread Peter Warner started a few weeks ago on Bonnie Macmillan's book very interesting and it sent me back to reread the book. Well worth rereading too. It's a book I should really keep by me to provide examples of research to use in arguements! From my perspective, as a teacher in the Irish Republic, it does seem that things have improved hugely in the UK since the 1990's.

Improvement in my own country sadly could hardly be said to have got off the ground yet.
There are a few favourable signs here. As I have said before Jolly Phonics is used in quite a few schools now and it is now possible to do a course in teaching reading using Jolly Phonics. (Most Irish primary teachers do a 5 day inservice course during the summer as it entitles us to 3 personal days that can be taken off during the school year.)

A teacher in Co. Galway, Anna Newell, produced a programme called Newell Literacy a few years ago which is in the learning support room of many schools. It isn't a perfect scheme to my mind but it does stress blending and segmenting and it did get quite a bit of media coverage when it was launched. Sadly it seems to sit on the shelves of most schools rather than be actually used to teach beginner readers.

Paddy McEvoy, Caroline Golding Brady and Harry Blackstock produced a synthetic phonics scheme Fonics Phirst. They were holding training courses on this in Dublin a few years ago but I'm not sure that they reached very many schools. I do know that they failed to get much Department of Educatio support so their summer course was considerably more expensive than the ones the Department subsidises.

Most teachers here are completely unaware of any of this and when I talk to young trainee teachers it seems obvious that it isn't being taught in colleges of Education either.

Given how bad things are here, the progress in the UK since the publication of "Why schoolchildren can't read" seems amazing to me!

Phonics International is used in Ireland too.

I would agree Goodenough. The situation in Northern Ireland is fairly dire. The last International Adult Literacy Survey ( IALS ) was carried out here in 1996, 1 in 4 people of working age in Northern Ireland had levels of literacy and numeracy at the lowest level, Band 1. The survey showed that the incidence of the problem in Northern Ireland was higher in all but one of the 14 countries participating in the survey.

I don’t feel that there has been much improvement in the last 14 years. The Rose Report went almost unnoticed here. Reading Recovery is hugely popular, as is the balanced approach on which it is now based, lots of Whole Language with a bit of incidental phonics thrown in to meet the latest research.

Paddy McEvoy is producing an online course. I don't know whether it has been 'unveiled' yet - but do hope that the course helps to start the ball rolling. He did the pgtraining at the same time as many of us here and has worked tirelessly since then.

Dear Goodenough,
Sounds-Write (http://www.sounds-write.co.uk) regularly runs trainings in Northern Ireland and, in fact, is hosting a new course in Dungannon from 8th to 11th June. We are also hoping to be able to offer trainings in the Republic sometime after September.
Best wishes,
John Walker

I take people's points about programmes that I didn't mention being used in Ireland. Phonics International does get recommended from time to time on a teachers' message board over here. I will certainly look out for Paddy MacEvoy's programme and for Sounds-Write if it is being promoted in the Republic.
Certainly there is more awareness than there was of the importance of phonics teaching which is to say more awareness than none at all. In my experience though the awareness amounts to a commitment to a mix of methods.
I find it interesting and disheartening that Jim feels that the situation in Northern Ireland is "fairly dire". I had assumed that things were better in Northern Ireland than in the Republic and it is disappointing that The Rose Report has not produced more change. We are, I fear, a very long way from having our own "Rose Report".
I did come across a hopeful sign recently though. I spoke to a Learning Support teacher who attended an inservice day on teaching children with hearing difficulties. She reported that the session stressed the importance of phonics for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. The facilitator said that expecting deaf children to learn every word by sight was setting them up for failure as it is an impossible task. She specifically said that the practice of labelling everything in the classroom is no substitute for teaching children to "work out" words for themselves. This seems a big improvement on the instruction I received on an in-service day on our National Curriculum to create "a print-saturated environment" in my classroom. (Print-rich wasn't enough apparently!)

Well, of course, 'print rich' doesn't cut the mustard, so print saturated is the logical extension. What hyper-inflationary words will be used next ...

I trace most of the problems and continuing resistance back to constructivism. This philosophy has been responsible for the half baked notion that all learning is a natural and instinctive process, that learning to read is just an extension of learning to talk and just as natural. Teachers are viewed as facilitators and direct instruction is viewed with horror.

Goodenough, have you seen this?

http://www.politics.ie/education-scienc ... ns-us.html