Audrey Duffy, Phonics Lead at this two-form entry school in Luton, England, explains how, despite serving a community with above-average levels of Pupil Premium eligibility, Special Educational Needs, and pupils with English as an Additional Language, careful planning and the rigorous training of all staff has delivered solid results, and led to obtaining Silver accreditation in recognition of the school’s commitment to high quality phonics practice.

In 2021 we were looking for a phonics scheme that would help to improve reading outcomes by fostering a consistent teaching approach within and across year groups. Sounds-Write offered a number of ways to achieve this through a rigorous training programme for all staff, clear identification of phonemic skills and conceptual knowledge, precise lesson scripts and cumulative teaching of code knowledge.

A member of the Leadership Team and the Phonics Lead undertook the training and were impressed by the rigorous pedagogical and research-based underpinnings of the scheme. We could see how, by ensuring that all staff who teach phonics also completed training, we would quickly achieve consistency across the school.

We introduced Sounds-Write to EYFS and KS1 pupils in September 2021 and to those KS2 pupils that required phonics catch-up interventions. Where appropriate, it has also been incorporated into Nursery teaching towards the end of the academic year.

Over subsequent years, training has been rolled out and now a total of twenty-eight current members of staff have been trained. In addition, new members of teaching and support staff complete their training on the Members’ Portal. This has ensured that all pupils receive daily phonics teaching, keep-up and catch-up interventions and 1:1 reading support from fully trained adults. Sounds-Write-trained support staff now act as ‘Reading Mentors’ to pupils from across the whole school providing phonics keep-up/catch-up interventions and 1:1 reading for those who need it.

Our improved PSC scores demonstrate how impactful Sounds-Write has been for all pupils, including those who are disadvantaged, have special educational needs or have English as an additional language.

Audrey Duffy, Phonics Lead

Before the rollout, we created a comprehensive medium-term plan linking the phonics units to the appropriate decodable reading books. We also created a weekly planning pro-forma to ease teacher planning and ensure consistency. We found that, by investing heavily in decodable reading books, we were able to ensure that pupils had what they needed to embed their new code knowledge.

Teaching staff have found the clear progression, lesson scripts and error corrections useful in delivering impactful phonics teaching. And the results speak for themselves. Our Phonics Screening Check outcomes have improved substantially and, taking into account the children who had to retake in Year 2, the cumulative scores were 90% for 2022, 93% for 2023 and 98% for 2024.

Pupils enjoy phonics and reading lessons and have a sense of pride in their growing abilities. Parents have been invited to workshops and to phonics lessons to discover how their children are learning to read and spell at school. We have also added the free, Help your child to read and write course onto our school website. Many parents have commented on the progress their child is making in their reading ability, confidence in reading and enjoyment of reading.