The app for independent voices
In light of the announcement yesterday from Minister Stanford it is incredibly important to understand these things:
1) Phonics is not a simple silver bullet. It teaches children at a certain age and stage to decode and pronounce words. It does not teach literacy and meaning.
2) The data presented is administrative data recording outcomes on a simple decoding test administered to different children at the same stage or learning. This does not show any longitudinal improvement in literacy for any individual child. It is also not a valid science based assessment - which the ministry openly acknowledges and cautions against these results being seen as such.
3) While we hope that this is an emergent good news story, it is premature to trumpet it as such.
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As deeper background, this provides a very timely and in depth look at phonics and literacy and the evidence about what it achieves. It is very consistent with what seems to be emerging in Aotearoa New Zealand. TLDR; Phonics helps word decoding, it does not automatically mean better literacy, the evidence of its success is often misrepresented and overstated. And - yes - in-depth does mean long, but long in a good way ;-)