Over a decade of legally mandated synthetic phonics in England has not improved standardized reading outcomes (PIRLS, PISA, SATs)¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · review r1 · q2
Currency · newest study 2021 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Since 2007 all English state schools must teach synthetic phonics, yet no improvement is evident on PIRLS, PISA, or national SATs; only the Phonics Screening Check itself improved. → Jeffrey S. Bowers 2021 q2 i? PSC mean scores improved only modestly, from 29.5/40 in 2012 to 33.8/40 in 2019, possibly reflecting teaching to the test. → Jeffrey S. Bowers 2021 (2)

Evidence¶

Jeffrey S. Bowers 2021¶

Jeffrey S. Bowers. (2021). Yes Children Need to Learn Their GPCs but There Really Is Little or No Evidence that Systematic or Explicit Phonics Is Effective: a response to Fletcher, Savage, and Sharon (2020). Educational Psychology Review (2021) 33:1965–1979. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09602-z

q2 · i? · review · r1

Natural-experiment evidence from England, where every state school has been legally required to teach synthetic phonics since 2007 and all children take the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check since 2012. No improvement on PIRLS, PISA, or SATs is reported.

"However, as I detail in my review, there is little or no evidence that the introduction of phonics has improved performance on any of the standardized reading outcomes, namely, the international standardized tests of PIRLS, PISA, nor the national reading tests in England called SATs."

Jeffrey S. Bowers 2021 (2)¶

Jeffrey S. Bowers. (2021). Yes Children Need to Learn Their GPCs but There Really Is Little or No Evidence that Systematic or Explicit Phonics Is Effective: a response to Fletcher, Savage, and Sharon (2020). Educational Psychology Review (2021) 33:1965–1979. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09602-z

q2 · i? · theoretical · r3

The author computed means from the GOV.UK 'phonics tables' for 2012–2019: mean PSC scores rose from 29.5/40 to 33.8/40, a modest increase despite the pass rate rising from 58% to 82%, possibly due to training to the test such as practicing nonsense words.

"The mean scores improved from 29.5/40 to 33.8/40."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Estimates of cohort achievement trends vary substantially by survey agent, with PISA reporting negative math trends — related
• Systematic phonics outperforms unsystematic or no-phonics instruction on children's reading overall, but its advantage over whole-word teaching on novel words is untested in children and contested — related
• Instruction that includes systematic phonics leads to better spelling and reading outcomes than instruction that does not — related
• Early synthetic phonics teaching that emphasises blending letter sounds showed no evidence of impairing reading of irregular words — related
• The group taught by synthetic phonics showed better word reading, spelling, and reading comprehension overall than the analytic phonics group — related