Nick Gibb's speech to the RRF conference

[maizie]

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ ... of-phonics


Quite a lively debate about funding followed this!

[Elizabeth]

See the article in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... ister.html

[Susan Godsland]

Janet Downs 'grandparent':

'School Reform Minister, Nick Gibb, talks about phonics and gets it wrong again'

http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2 ... ong-again/

[john walker]

I've just replied to Ms Downs.

[JIM CURRAN]

I'm sorry to disappoint Ms.Downs but she will be waiting a very long time for a Schools Minister who knows as much about how children learn to read as Nick Gibb, he's just a class act.

[john walker]

Dick Schutz is presently hotly engage in debate on this forum:
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2 ... ent-339779

[Susan Godsland]

A couple of quotes from Dick on that thread

If you you have “no problem with phonics,” “it was always there,” and so on, then why aren’t all kids passing the Check? 32 out of 40 is actually a pretty low cut score.
That is, any capable reading can breeze through all of the 40 words, and the pseudo-words wouldn’t phase them. What isn’t fair and reasonable, in my view, is to lay the blame on the teachers. Yes, they’re “on the ground,” but the “blame” for the current status (if we want to play the blame game for a minute) lies squarely on the profs, pubs (as in publishers) and crats (as in bureau) who polluted the instructional water with metaphorical “Searchlights” and “real books,” ignorant of the essence of written communication–the Alphabetic Code. The pollution is still there, and the Screening Check is the best bet for dealing with it and moving on–just like what happens everywhere except EdLand.

But this check would surely be most effective if used at an appropriate time for each individual child
Well, simple exercises LIKE the Check are used day in and day out by Reception and Yr 1 teachers. That’s why the results of the Check are “nothing new” to them. But you are missing the purpose of the Check. The Check is administered to all children after two years of schooling. This gives schools and teachers a reasonable time period to teach all (+/) children how to handle the Alphabetic Code. A goodly number of schools are accomplishing this instructional job now, and an increasing number of schools have done so each year.

The purpose of the Check, though, is not to “praise teachers and schools” who have done so. The purpose is to identify children who need further instruction in Yr 2. Some children are getting that instruction in Yr 2. Most aren’t. The reason doesn’t reside in the kids. It resides in the instruction the kids are getting.

There’s no need to spend more than £4m a year on mandating a check which all children take in the same time frame.
4m GBP is a super-bargain! The US is spending multiBiillion $ to do “the same thing, only worse.”