UK Conservatives’ recent plans to ensure that all children are able to read by the age of six have been criticized by teachers’ leaders, the Daily Telegraph has reported.
According to the Conservatives, a switch to teaching children to read by phonics and a simpler reading test regime are two key elements of the plans. Under the plans, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, a UK government body inspecting education for learners of all ages, will be empowered to police the teaching of reading through a system known as synthetic phonics. The current Key Stage One test, a complex assessment held after the first two years of primary school, will be replaced by a simple test at the age of six or seven. This will assess whether a child has mastered the skill of “decoding” how words are constructed.
Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary said it was important to focus early education on learning to read. “It is only once children have learnt to read that they can then go on to read to learn,” Gove said.
However, the UK National Primary Headteachers’ Association criticized the move. Spokesman Chris Davis said setting targets for young children flew in the face of international evidence. In Scandinavian countries, children do not start reading until six but soon overtake their counterparts in the UK. “The target is too early. One of the worst things you can do with a very young child is give them the impression that they can’t do something. That can put them off for a very long time, if not for ever,” he added.
Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the UK National Union of Teachers, said synthetic phonics was useful but the Conservatives were “obsessed” with it. “They somehow think it is a magic solution for everything else,” he said.
According to Lib Dem schools spokesman David Laws, the policy risked “treating schools as educational factory farms”.
Lilian Katz, former president of the US National Association for the Education of Young Children and a respected authority on early years education, addressed an international conference on nursery schooling at Oxford University that children should not start formal learning until they are seven. “It can be seriously damaging for children who see themselves as inept at reading too early,” she said.
