Cymraeg 2050 - The Challenge We Are Facing (Part 2)

 

Guest Post - Mathias Maurer

Welsh in English-medium primary education:

Cymraeg 2050 - The challenge we are facing

 

Part 2: Key obstacles in the English-medium sector

 

Introduction

In Part 1 of this blog I described the challenges we face in the EM primary sector, and why we might not yet be on the right path to achieve the EM goal in the Cymraeg 2050 strategy paper. I have shown why I think the approach in the EM sector needs to be distinctly different from the approach in the WM sector and suggested that we should focus our efforts on three key issues: teacher’s Welsh language proficiency, teacher pedagogical knowledge and curriculum design. 

In Part 2 I will now look at these 3 key issues in more detail and explain why I believe they are so crucial and must be addressed urgently.

 

Welsh language proficiency of EM primary teachers

A language teacher’s proficiency in the target language is one of the key factors affecting learning outcomes. Suzanne Graham et al. (2017), for example, came to the conclusion that, together with teaching time, primary school teachers’ French proficiency had the biggest impact on pupils’ progress in grammatical and lexical knowledge.

It is reasonable to assume that, in the EM primary sector, the variation in Welsh language proficiency between different teachers and schools is significant. This is likely to have serious implications for the quality and consistency regarding the design and delivery of Welsh curricula at school level.

I believe that coherence and progression across year groups, especially in KS2, can only be achieved if support and professional learning take into account and specifically target this variation in proficiency. The aim has to be that those schools and teachers whose Welsh might not be as strong as that of their colleagues in the class below or the school down the road can still plan and deliver their Welsh lessons with confidence, at a level that ensures coherence and progression across year groups and from primary to secondary school.

Let me explain one of the ways in which, in the context of Cymraeg 2050, a lack in Welsh language proficiency can seriously impact the quality of the teaching of Welsh, even at primary level:

In a key passage regarding the contributions the EM sector will have to make to achieve the 1 million goal, Cymraeg 2050 expresses the intention

to develop a single continuum for the teaching of Welsh as a language, with an emphasis on learning Welsh predominantly as a means of communication, particularly oral communication. (Welsh Government, 2017)

The emphasis on oral communication is significant and should guide us in our efforts to reform the EM primary sector. We need to reflect on the balance between speaking and writing tasks for example, and on how our Welsh skills might affect our task choice: For a less proficient teacher with limited resources and professional training for example it might be easier and therefore appear tempting to shift focus to highly scaffolded written work in books rather than spend more time developing oral communication skills.

For learners to be able to communicate orally, it is vital they acquire meaningful high frequency language items that are relevant to their communication needs. This is a problem for less proficient schools and teachers: In the Welsh language, many of the most frequent language items that are relevant to primary pupils and which they need to communicate effectively happen to have grammatical properties, such as mutations, that go beyond the basic Welsh that is traditionally taught to beginners. Here are two examples:

             fy mrawd i; dy frawd di; Mae un brawd gyda fi

            dod o Gaerdydd; byw yng Nghaerdydd; Prif-ddinas Cymru ydy Caerdydd

Less proficient teachers might not have the knowledge and the confidence to generate these items correctly and independently for use in their own teaching. In many instances, this is likely to lead to the avoidance of such items, and as a result, pupils miss out on learning important language items they need to communicate meaningfully and naturally. In other words, a teacher’s lack of Welsh language proficiency directly impacts their ability to teach the communication skills at the heart of our Cymraeg 2050 strategy for the EM sector.

 

Pedagogical knowledge and skills of EM primary teachers

In Curriculum for Wales, the Descriptions of Learning offer guidance on how learners should progress within each statement of what matters. Expressed from the learner’s perspective as ‘I can’ statements, they provide reference points for the pace of progression and aim to help sustain learning over a prolonged time.

When designing their school-level curricula, EM primary schools and teachers will have to translate these prose statements into actual language and lesson content. This process should be informed by the Principles of Progression which are part of the curriculum guidance.

Their Welsh language proficiency will determine to which degree they are able to do so, but there are also further challenges, independent of teachers’ Welsh language proficiency:

The problem is that knowing ‘what’ to teach will still not be sufficient on its own – teachers also require the pedagogical skills and knowledge so they can make the right choices about ‘how’ to teach the language. Teachers’ pedagogical knowledge is not linked to their language proficiency – those are two separate, distinct entities. Being a fluent speaker does not automatically make you an effective teacher of Welsh, unless you also have developed a good understanding of language acquisition processes and effective pedagogy. Similarly, being a great teacher of primary maths or even English as a first language does not guarantee an ability to teach Welsh equally well without further, specific training. And here is why:

The cognitive processes that take place when we learn a new language are different from the cognitive processes that occur when we acquire new knowledge and skills in other domains. For example, one particular aspect of language acquisition which I would argue is not widely enough acknowledged in the EM primary teaching community is the role that priming plays in language acquisition.

Whereas language learning might superficially appear to merely be the process of learning new words and learning to combine them using grammatical rules, the work of Hoey (2005) and Bock and Griffin (2000) for example shows the importance of lexical and structural priming: Through repeated hearing and reading of lexical items and grammatical constructions we subconsciously take note of the combinations and grammatical forms that certain words are most likely to form, and of common sentence structures.

Crucially, this essential learning happens subconsciously, without any explicit effort to memorise. In a study involving brain-damaged learners who had no explicit memory of the sentences they were primed for, the subjects were still shown to have acquired the prime sentences, which led Ferreira et al. (2008) to the conclusion the learning must have happened implicitly.

The difference between implict and explicit learning is one of the most important reasons why effective language pedagogy is distinctly different from effective pedagogy in other domains. Unless EM primary teachers have received relevant high-quality training, they are unlikely to be able to take advantage of the most effective pedagogy for the Welsh language classroom. Indeed, I believe it is reasonable to assume that the current unsatisfactory outcomes for Welsh in KS2 as described by Estyn in the 2019-2020 Annual Report (Estyn, 2020) are in part caused by a lack of training in and knowledge of effective language teaching pedagogy across the EM primary sector. This further aggravates the problems that a lack of Welsh language proficiency can cause, but also affects those teachers who might be proficient speakers on the one hand, but lack the pedagogical knowledge to teach effectively on the other hand.

 

Knowledge, skills and capacity to develop an evidence informed Welsh language curriculum

In September 2022 Curriculum for Wales will become mandatory for all maintained primary schools in Wales. Rooted in the principle of subsidiarity, the expectation is on all stakeholders to co-construct a curriculum that enables learners to progress towards the four purposes.

In the current phase of the rollout, primary schools are developing their individual school-level curricula, based on the four purposes, the six Areas of Learning and Experiences, the Principles of Progression and the Descriptors of Learning which outline progression within the statements of what matters that underpin each AoLE.

Designing a primary school curriculum is a challenging task at the best of times, but doing so in the midst of a pandemic has put previously unimaginable strains on the sector. Priorities had to be adjusted, and it is not unreasonable to assume that many schools have been unable to take full advantage of the professional learning support in curriculum design that has been offered by the consortia and other providers.

So what constitutes an evidence-informed Welsh language curriculum? Here are some of the elements that I consider essential`:

 

Language selection

With the overall Cymraeg 2050 ‘emphasis on learning Welsh predominantly as a means of communication, particularly oral communication’, it is vital that the language we teach our learners is relevant to their communication needs. Communicative language can be categorised into communicative functions, with related sub-functions. Planning language from such communicative functions and sub-functions helps to keep the focus on communication needs and avoids the trappings of topic-based language planning, which comes with the inherent danger that a considerable proportion of the topic-based language, especially vocabulary, might be relevant within this topic, but not in any other context.

 

Language recycling

Linguists distinguish between receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary. In mother tongue and additional languages alike, there are words we recognise and can make meaning of when we hear or read them (receptive vocabulary), but that we don’t use in our speech and writing (productive vocabulary). In order to become confident oral communicators, it is vital for our learners to develop their productive vocabulary and become increasingly fluent in using it.

Shifting vocabulary from receptive to productive knowledge is a long process that requires skilful long-term planning: Teachers need to decide what vocabulary they want their learners to be able to use actively, and then make sure their curriculum offers many processing and retrieval opportunities for this vocabulary over an extended period of time, and in a variety of contexts. The process of revisiting previously taught language is commonly referred to as ‘recycling’.  By providing ample recycling opportunities while moving along the language progression and introducing new language as well, an evidence-informed, cumulative language curriculum ensures that learners have the numerous processing and production opportunities they need to become increasingly fluent and confident in the use of the target language.

 

Task-sequencing

Evidence-informed language teaching makes use of what we know about the cognitive processes involved in language acquisition. For our learners to become confident and competent oral communicators, it is vital that we structure our teaching in a way that allows them to develop a degree of automaticity in their oral communication. The ultimate goal is listening and speaking fluency.

The cognitive process involved in developing the receptive and productive automaticity required for oral communication is different from the retrieval process we use to recall declarative knowledge in other domains.

In many subjects and contexts, explicit instruction, followed by spaced retrieval practice, is an efficient way to commit declarative knowledge to long-term memory, from where it can be retrieved when needed (I simplify!). The consequence of Hoey’s (2005), and Bock and Griffin’s (2000) findings about semantic and syntactic priming is however that effective language instruction ideally should start with a phase of receptive processing and implicit learning, giving learners multiple opportunities to process the target language through listening and reading, activating different levels of cognitive processing first.

Once listening fluency is achieved (instant recognition of the target language items), learners are then ready to move on to producing the language orally, through a series of progressively less structured tasks that allow them to eventually produce the target items in their speech, without additional support.

An evidence-informed language curriculum supports this acquisition process through a series of carefully sequenced tasks, moving from listening to speaking, and from reading to writing. Offering multiple opportunities for implicit learning through processing of the target language items in the initial stages is a key element of this approach.

 

While the three elements described above - language selection, language recycling and task sequencing - are essential for an effective language curriculum, there are others, such as effective phonic and grammar instruction, that should also be carefully woven into the teaching sequence.

I believe that designing a EM Welsh curriculum based on the principles outlined above goes well beyond the means of most EM primary schools and teachers. Crucially, I would argue that even teachers with a significant amount of pedagogical knowledge and skills require additional specialist training to design such a curriculum.

Once in place, a high-quality language curriculum facilitates impactful teaching and thus improves outcomes for all learners: It is easier to teach, not harder. Novice and less proficient teachers will benefit from the structure and resources it provides, and more experienced teachers will use it as a stepping stone to build their individual curricula that are tailored to their own skills and responsive to the needs of their learners.

My concern is that even in normal times the task of designing such an effective, evidence-based Welsh language curriculum would be too much of a challenge for many EM primary schools. Given the challenges we had to overcome and the situation in which we now find ourselves, I fear that even more EM schools will have to prioritise and, as a result, compromise on the quality of their Welsh language curriculum.

The question is, how can we use what we know about the specific challenges the sector is facing to optimise support?

How can we join up professional learning and supporting resources so we can realistically expect a positive impact across the whole sector, not just in those EM primary schools that are lucky enough to have specialist teachers of Welsh among their staff?

 

Conclusion Part 2:

In Part 2, I have explained what I believe to be the three main obstacles that hold the EM primary sector back from improving outcomes in Welsh:

· A lack of Welsh language proficiency is likely impact on a significant amount of EM schools’ and teachers’ ability to develop their pupils’ oral communication effectively

 

· Effective pedagogy requires an understanding of language acquisition theory and specialist concepts such as lexical and structural priming that goes beyond most EM primary teachers’ expertise.

 

· Key concepts of a successful language curriculum, such as language selection, language recycling and task-sequencing require specialist knowledge and skills that many EM primary schools are unlikely to have the capacity for.

In Part 3, I will suggest what I believe to be a realistic and manageable approach to tackling these challenges and set the EM primary sector on the right track for Cymraeg 2050.

Thank you for reading!

 

References:

Bock, K., and Griffin, Z. M., 2000. The persistence of structural priming: transient activation or implicit learning?. Journal of experimental psychology. General, 129(2), pp.177–192.

Estyn, 2020. The Annual Report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Education and Training in Wales; available online at: https://www.estyn.gov.wales/system/files/2021-12/ESTYN%20Annual%20Report%202019-2020.pdf [last accessed on 07/01/2022].

Ferreira V. S., Bock K., Wilson M. P., Cohen N. J.,2008. Memory for syntax despite amnesia. Psychological Science, 19 (9) pp. 940-946.

Graham, S., Courtney, L., Marinis, T. and Tonkyn, A., 2017. Early language learning: The impact of teaching and teacher factors. Language Learning, 67(4), pp.922-958.

Hoey, M., 2005. Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language. London: Routledge.

Welsh Government, 2017. Cymraeg 2050: Welsh Language Strategy; available online at: https://gov.wales/cymraeg-2050-welsh-language-strategy [last accessed on 07/01/2022].

Cymraeg 2050 - The challenge we are facing!

 

Guest Post by Mathias Maurer

Welsh in English-medium primary education:

Cymraeg 2050 - The challenge we are facing

Introduction

In this series of three blogs, I will make the case that, if we want to improve the outcomes for Welsh in the English-medium (EM) primary sector in order to meet the EM target for Cymraeg 2050, we need a core Welsh language progression, a well-resourced, evidence-informed core curriculum based on this language progression, and targeted high-quality professional learning that underpins both.

I will make the point that, if we provide a carefully resourced core curriculum, professional learning can focus on effective language pedagogy, novice and less confident EM primary teachers in particular will benefit from using worked examples: drawing on high-quality, carefully sequenced teaching activities that follow a coherent evidence-informed core Welsh scheme will allow them to deepen their pedagogical understanding and become increasingly confident and independent as teachers of Welsh in EM primary schools.

I will argue that this strategy offers a far greater chance of achieving the required sector-wide change than an approach where the task of designing language progression, curriculum and resources is left to individual schools and teachers, without an expert-made, evidence-informed core supported by high-quality professional learning.

Finally, I will try and show how this approach will support all schools without limiting any of them, as confident and capable teachers will be able to go further, adapt and build on the core curriculum to suit their own skills and the needs of their context and pupils.

 

Part 1: Cymraeg 2050 and the role of the English-medium sector

Cymraeg 2050

In September 2022, Curriculum for Wales will become mandatory for all maintained primary schools in Wales.  I would like to use this moment to take a closer look at the current situation of Welsh in the English medium primary sector, and the challenges we will need to overcome if we want to achieve the goal of one million speakers by the year 2050, as outlined in the Cymraeg 2050 strategy paper (Welsh Government, 2017).

Welsh medium immersion education is an essential pillar of the Cymraeg 2050 strategy: It is explicitly mentioned as the “principal method for ensuring that children can develop their Welsh language skills, and for creating new speakers.” Whilst I welcome the resources and initiatives directed at Welsh medium education, I believe that the English medium sector must an can be given more thought and support as well because of the equally crucial role it has to play in the Cymraeg 2050 effort.

An imbalance in the attention both sectors receive is for example reflected in the number of mentions of ‘Welsh-medium’ versus ‘English-medium’ in two key papers, Cymraeg 2050 (57 versus 4) and the Welsh Language commissioner’s 2016 to 2020 5-Year report (178 versus 19). Furthermore, Estyn’s focus over the past 15 years has very much been on Welsh in the WM sector: Since 2008, seven thematic reports for Welsh in WM and bilingual education have been produced, spanning all phases from Foundation Phase up to A-Level and Further Education. Only one thematic report for Welsh in the EM sector has been produced during the same period, about Welsh Language Development in the Foundation Phase (Estyn, 2013).

This matters, because Cymraeg 2050 provides a target for the English medium sector that is as ambitious as it is specific:

To reach a million speakers, we need to transform how we teach Welsh to learners in all other schools [ie non-Welsh medium schools], in order that at least half of those learners report by 2050 that they can speak Welsh by the time they leave school. (Welsh Government, 2017)

To re-phrase: It is the responsibility of the EM and bilingual sectors that, by 2050, half of all EM and bilingual education pupils describe themselves as Welsh speakers by the time they complete their GCSE.

In the bigger picture this means that from the 70% Welsh speakers we want to leave education by 2050, nearly half will have to come from the EM sector. This is the challenge, and I fear that by not providing the EM sector with the specific support it requires, we seriously risk missing the overall Cymraeg 2050 goal.

 

The Welsh language commissioner’s 5-year report

In his 2016 to 2020 5-year report, the Welsh Language Commissioner picked up the theme of transforming how we teach Welsh in the EM sector. Here is what he described as one of the three main work streams in Cymraeg 2050 that are relevant to the education sector:

Transforming the way Welsh is taught in English-medium schools to significantly increase the number of pupils that can speak Welsh by the time they leave the education sector. (Welsh Language Commissioner, 2021a)

While the Language Commissioner referred to government plans and strategies according to which

the introduction of a new curriculum for Wales will drive these changes to the way in which the Welsh language is taught in English medium schools (Welsh Language Commissioner, 2021a)

he implicitly acknowledged that the new curriculum on its own might not be enough to affect the desired change, and that more support was needed for EM schools and teachers. In his 2020 to 2021 annual report for example he stated that he looked forward to

the publication of the Welsh language framework to support English-medium schools and teachers so that they can contribute fully to the Welsh Government's target that 70 per cent of 15-year-olds will be able to speak Welsh by 2050 (Welsh Language Commissioner, 2021b)

As stated above, the EM and bilingual sectors’ contribution to the overall 70% (which includes WM learners) amounts to about half of all EM learners describing themselves as Welsh speakers by the time they leave school. 

Unfortunately, I have been unable to find current precise data on the number of EM learners leaving school who describe themselves as Welsh speaking. Various age brackets are available in the Annual Population Surveys and in the 10-year census data, but no data that would allow us to take precise stock of where we are now in the EM sector in relation to the 2050 target.

This concerns me. If we want to do our best to achieve the 2050 target, then it is crucial we make the right decisions and choose the most promising path as soon as possible. This means understanding and acknowledging the scale of the challenge in the first place and tracking the impact of our measures.

So, if there is data that is directly comparable to the 2050 target, I would be grateful if someone with more knowledge of the matter could point me towards it. Otherwise I would strongly recommend we start collecting this data at regular intervals from now on, allowing us to track our progress towards the target as precisely as possible, with the option to rethink and adjust our approach should the data suggest this is necessary.

In the 2020-2021 Annual Report, the Welsh Language Commissioner mentioned the new Welsh language framework to support English-medium schools and teachers (Welsh Government, 2021). This is a welcome initiative. It addresses the fact that current outcomes in the EM primary sector are far from satisfactory, and that Curriculum for Wales on its own is unlikely to provide sufficient support to improve the situation on the scale required.

In my opinion, improving our performance in KS2 across the whole EM primary sector is key to facilitating a smoother transition from primary to secondary schools, which in turn will be essential for achieving the ambitious 50% Welsh speakers target by 2050.

To get a better understanding of the EM primary sector’s current performance, it is worth taking a look at Estyn’s 2019 to 2020 Annual Report, the last one that uses pre-pandemic data.

 

Estyn’s Annual Report 2019 to 2020

Consider Estyn’s 2019 to 2020 Annual Report: While on the one hand reporting that

In many English medium primary schools, pupils develop a positive attitude towards learning the Welsh language (Estyn, 2020)

it also raises considerable concerns regarding progress in KS2 in particular:

In most schools, pupils use their Welsh speaking skills appropriately, but the progress they make between the foundation phase and the end of key stage 2 is often limited.

The report provides little indication as to what Estyn would consider effective steps to address this situation, but the connections it makes between ethos and outcomes might offer a clue:

In the few strongest schools where leaders prioritise Welsh and ensure that it is valued as part of the school’s ethos, pupils understand the importance of being bilingual or multilingual, and the importance of the Welsh language to our national identity. In these few cases, pupils make particularly good progress with the development of their Welsh language skills, using it regularly outside of specific Welsh lessons and as part of the daily life of the school.  (Estyn, 2020)

 

There appears to be a theme linking attitudes and ethos to progress and outcomes, perhaps leading some readers to the conclusion that progress and outcomes are best improved by focusing resources on promoting the use of Welsh, and by improving attitudes and ethos. While these are certainly important elements of a successful language environment, I am concerned that the actual teaching of Welsh, the pedagogy of delivering a high-quality curriculum, does not receive the attention it requires. Why might this be? Personally, I suspect that, in our efforts to improve EM outcomes we might be tempted to imitate the highly effective immersive learning environments of Welsh medium schools.

In my view, this is problematic because circumstances in WM primary schools are fundamentally different from those in EM primary schools, making it impossible to transfer significant elements of the WM immersion approach to the majority of schools in the EM sector. In 2019, according to the EWC, the number of teachers able to teach through the medium of Welsh stood at 26.9%. If we assume that the vast majority of these teachers work in the WM sector, then it is reasonable to conclude that the number of EM primary teachers who are able to teach through Welsh is very low indeed, ruling out any efforts to improve outcomes on a sector wide scale through creating a semi-immersive learning environment modelled on the WM sector.

It is essential that any efforts to improve EM primary sector outcomes take into account the Welsh skills of the current workforce. In my opinion, not enough research and effort have gone into finding out how we can support our current EM primary teachers, especially in KS2.

 

Professional learning and effective pedagogy

This matters because both Cymraeg 2050 and the commissioner’s 5-year report specifically mention the ‘how’ and the ‘way Welsh is taught’ as targets for improvement, not school ethos and pupils’ attitudes to learning Welsh (although these are of course important in their own right). Furthermore, I am of the opinion that, although well-intended, the Framework for Welsh in EM Education (recently published as draft, out for consultation) is not sufficient on its own to support schools in addressing the ‘how’, the ‘way Welsh is taught’.

The key to improving pedagogy is high quality professional learning. No framework, no high-quality curriculum are likely to succeed unless the teachers delivering it have the necessary pedagogical knowledge and professional understanding underpinning it.

It is my strong believe that, if we want to raise our expectations in the EM primary sector and improve outcomes on the scale necessary to aspire to the Cymraeg 2050 challenge, we must think deeply about what kind of professional learning we need. How can we use our available resources and tap into the already available pedagogical expertise to support the process and maximise benefits for the whole sector? 

For supporting resources and professional learning to have impact, they need to be targeted to the specific needs of the workforce.

In my opinion, there are three distinct issues affecting the EM primary sector: 

1.    a considerable variation in the Welsh language proficiency of EM primary teachers
2.    a considerable variation in the pedagogical knowledge and skills of EM primary teachers
3.   the variation in knowledge, skills and capacity to design an evidence-informed Welsh language curriculum in the EM primary sector

Different schools and teachers will be affected by these issues in different combinations and to different degrees. Some might not need any support at all, but it is my strong believe that any attempt at addressing the current problems on a sector-wide scale will have to consider each of these points, in a way that can realistically be delivered to all schools and teachers in need of support.

 

Conclusion Part 1

So far I have described the challenges we face in the EM primary sector, and why we might not yet be on the right path to achieve the goal in the Cymraeg 2050 strategy paper. I have shown why I think the approach in the EM sector needs to be distinctly different from the approach in the WM sector and suggested that we should focus our efforts on three key issues: teacher proficiency, teacher pedagogical knowledge and curriculum design. 

In Part 2 of this blog I will look at these three key issues in more detail and explain why I believe they are so crucial and must be addressed urgently. Part 3 then will suggest what I consider would be a realistic approach to tackling the challenges and set the EM primary sector on the right track for Cymraeg 2050.

Thank you for reading!

 

References

Estyn, 2020. The Annual Report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Education and Training in Wales; available online at: https://www.estyn.gov.wales/system/files/2021-12/ESTYN%20Annual%20Report%202019-2020.pdf [last accessed on 07/01/2022].

Welsh Government, 2017. Cymraeg 2050: Welsh Language Strategy; available online at: https://gov.wales/cymraeg-2050-welsh-language-strategy [last accessed on 07/01/2022].

Welsh Government, 2021. Framework for Welsh; available online at: https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/consultations/2022-02/draft-framework-for-welsh-in-english-medium-education-consultation-doc.pdf [last accessed 22/02/2022]

Welsh Language Commissioner, 2021a. The Position of the Welsh Language 2016–20: Welsh Language Commissioner’s 5-year Report; available online at: https://www.welshlanguagecommissioner.wales/policy-and-research/research/the-position-of-the-welsh-language-2016-20 [last accessed on 07/01/2022].

Welsh Language Commissioner, 2021b. Annual Report 2020-2021; available online at: https://senedd.wales/media/spnnawvk/agr-ld14508-e.pdf [last accessed on 07/01/2022].

Putting Welsh Children at a Disadvantage

Guest Post by Rob Randel

Putting Welsh Children at a Disadvantage:

the Estyn Report compared with The reading framework

As a primary school teacher in Wales, I am concerned that our children are at a disadvantage compared with those in England, because of the way they are taught to read. I would like to thank those who commented and made suggestions for this blog: a blog that asks you to examine the evidence and to consider the guidance given to teachers in Wales about the teaching of reading. 

In March 2021, Estyn published their report: English language and literacy in settings and primary schools. Following this, in July 2021, the Department for Education in England published their policy paper: ​​The reading framework: teaching the foundations of literacy.

 

Education in Wales is devolved. Our curriculum is different from the national curriculum for England and we do not follow the Department for Education’s guidance. This raises an important question: Why should early reading instruction be different for children in Wales from that for children in England?

 

Estyn was involved in shaping the new curriculum. Is it because of Estyn that Wales still promotes an approach misleadingly known as ‘balanced literacy’, when there is overwhelming evidence that teaching systematic synthetic phonics is more effective?

 

The table below sets key paragraphs in the Estyn report alongside corresponding paragraphs in The reading framework. The comments are about similarities and differences. They include references to relevant evidence about early reading instruction.

The following table shows how the two reports agree.

Estyn – English language and literacy in settings and primary schools	DfE – The reading framework: teaching the foundations of literacy
Quotes	Quotes	Comments
Decoding, vocabulary and advanced reading skills   Primary schools should ... develop a clear strategy to support the effective teaching of reading, including addressing learners’ decoding skills, vocabulary development and advanced reading skills (R4)	Children need both good language comprehension and good word reading to become good readers.   A clearly defined curriculum extends children’s language and vocabulary   Pupils should read often ... to become more fluent, since fluency is important for comprehension.	Both reports assert the importance of decoding (word reading), vocabulary development and advanced reading skills, like fluency and reading comprehension.
A love of reading   Fostering a love of reading and literature is a priority in schools that develop learners’ language and literacy effectively.	Making sure that children become engaged with reading from the beginning is therefore one of the most important ways to make a difference to their life chances ...	Both reports emphasise the importance of fostering a love of reading.
Daily teaching, whole-school strategy and vocabulary   Schools who develop reading effectively teach it daily. Many use suitable resources successfully to support their teaching, of phonics for example. Where learners do not improve their reading skills well enough, often this is because there is no whole- school strategy to improve learners’ decoding skills, build their vocabulary knowledge, or develop their responses to what they read.	Teaching should ... be daily   [Headteachers should] adopt a ... programme that includes well-conceived and structured resources for teaching phonics   A clearly defined curriculum extends children’s language and vocabulary   Understanding vocabulary is vital for comprehension	Both reports state the need for daily teaching, suitable resources and developing children’s vocabulary and comprehension.
Systematic teaching of phonics   the teaching of phonics should be systematic and consistent (21)	... decoding and encoding can be taught through a systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme …	Phonics should be taught systematically.
Phonics, vocabulary and comprehension   the teaching of phonics should ... take place with other language activities, which promote vocabulary-building and comprehension. (21)	... language comprehension and composition are developed by talking, listening to and talking about stories, and by learning poetry and songs ...   The daily timetable for Reception and year 1 should include: •a storytime •a poetry/singing time •one or more phonics sessions.	Vocabulary, comprehension and phonics are all essential and should be taught alongside each other.

The next table shows how the two reports differ.

Estyn – English language and literacy in settings and primary schools	DfE – The reading framework: teaching the foundations of literacy
Quotes	Quotes	Comments
Sight words and high-frequency words   They read age-appropriate texts accurately, drawing on ‘sight vocabulary’ to read high-frequency words.  (34)	Children should not be asked to learn lists of high frequency words. They can read most of these in the usual way, by saying the sounds and blending them, when they have learnt the GPCs (letter-sound correspondences) in the words.   Sight-word learning on its own is insufficient for reading development and teaching with this approach alone is contrary to current evidence-based practices in literacy instruction.	‘Asking children to memorise scores of high frequency words (e.g. Dolch/Fry words) visually, without phonics decoding, is a harmful practice and why no high quality phonics programme expects children to learn words as logographs.’ Balanced Approach to Word Reading
Picture cues   Many use their knowledge of letter sounds and picture cues to help them read unfamiliar words.  (34)	‘Decodable’ books and other texts make children feel successful from the very beginning. They do not encounter words that include GPCs they have not been taught. If an adult is not present, they are not forced to guess from pictures, the context, the first letters of a word or its shape	Using picture cues to help children read unfamiliar words amounts to guessing.   It is part of the ‘3 cueing system’ which has been discredited:                                                                                                                                                                                                           ‘... the three-cueing system is a seriously flawed conception of the processes involved in skilled reading, and the practices flowing from its misconception may have contributed to the problems experienced by an unacceptably large number of students (Wren, 2001).’ (PDF) The three-cueing system: Trojan horse?   The only strategy children need when reading unfamiliar words is saying the sounds and blending them.   However, word reading should not be confused with comprehension. Other strategies are helpful for comprehension.
Decoding and comprehension teachers ... use a balanced approach to developing reading that integrates decoding and comprehension skills. (36)	Word reading and language comprehension require different sorts of teaching.   When children start learning to read, the number of words they can decode accurately is too limited to broaden their vocabulary. Their understanding of language should therefore be developed through their listening and speaking, while they are taught to decode through phonics.	The DfE follows the ‘simple view of reading’ model.   Estyn promotes an approach that mixes decoding with comprehension for beginners and calls it a ‘balanced approach to developing reading.’   There is a wealth of evidence showing that ‘balanced literacy’ is harmful to a child’s chances of becoming a skilled reader.   Balanced Literacy: An instructional bricolage that is neither fish nor fowl (Prof. Pamela Snow)   Balanced Approach to Word Reading
Reading schemes   In addition, learners’ progress in developing their reading skills can be adversely affected by having to adhere rigidly to a set number of texts from a reading scheme.  (36)	‘...schools should invest in books that have been carefully structured in cumulative steps for children learning to read, so that they can decode every word as their knowledge of the alphabetic code increases. These books are often referred to simply as ‘decodable’ books.’	It is not clear what Estyn means by ‘having to adhere rigidly to a set number of texts from a reading scheme’.   It is right that the number of texts should not be fixed and that teachers should consider supplementing their reading scheme for some children.   However, it is important that children can read the words in the texts they are asked to read without guessing, including words they have not come across before. This is easier to achieve with texts already matched to the phonics programme the school uses.   ‘An extra gain of 5 months in average reading age was made ... when the first set of decodable reading books was introduced’ Grant, M. (2014) Longitudinal Studies with Synthetic Phonics from Reception to Year 2 and to Year 6
Spelling   During the foundation phase, many learners progress to writing initial and end sounds to represent words successfully (42)	To encode (spell) words, children are taught to identify the phonemes in spoken words first. This is also referred to as ‘segmenting’ spoken words. Then they write the graphemes that represent the phonemes. Children: 1.hear the spoken word ‘dog’ 2.say ‘dog’ – /d/ /o/ /g/ 3.write the three corresponding graphemes ‘d’, ‘o’, ‘g’ to spell the word ‘dog’.	With synthetic phonics teaching, at no stage do children write initial and end sounds to represent words. Instead, they are taught to identify all the sounds in a word in order, and represent them with corresponding letters.
Sight vocabulary and high frequency words   In the most effective schools, their systematic and consistent approach to the teaching of phonics is well embedded and sustained over time. In addition, staff pay appropriate attention to developing learners’ sight vocabulary and recognition of high frequency words, to improve their decoding skills and reading fluency. (84)	Children should not be asked to learn lists of high frequency words. They can read most of these in the usual way, by saying the sounds and blending them, when they have learnt the GPCs in the words, e.g. ‘mum’ and ‘came’. Synthetic phonics programmes teach others systematically as exception words, e.g. ‘said’ and ‘to’.   Some children can decode a word by sounding and blending once; later, whenever they come across the same word, they read it ‘at a glance’. Most children, however, have to decode a word several times in different contexts before it becomes familiar enough to read ‘at a glance’. Children with poor short-term memories need to practise decoding a word many more times before they can read it ‘at a glance’.	Estyn has got this the wrong way around. It is through lots of practice decoding words by saying the sounds corresponding to the letters and blending them, that children learn to read words ‘by sight’, or ‘at a glance’, and develop fluency. Decoding skills and reading fluency are not improved by developing learners’ sight vocabulary and recognition of high frequency words.   Teaching whole words as ‘sight vocabulary’ without reference to letters is sometimes called ‘Look and say’. It has been discredited. See: https://www.dyslexics.org.uk/look-and-say-whole-language-teacher-training/
Interventions and context cues   In these schools, learning support assistants have strong expertise in teaching learners’ phonemic knowledge. They support learners well through interventions, where they practise important reading strategies with learners, such as segmenting phonemes and using the context to predict unknown words.  (84)	To enable children to keep up, they should be given extra practice ... The emphasis should be on: •consolidating the work the children have already met in their main ... phonics session ... •revising grapheme-phoneme correspondences ... •practising oral blending of spoken sounds to pronounce words •reading words by saying the sounds and blending them.	This is another example of Estyn promoting word guessing strategies in their report. See the section about picture cues.   Discouraging guessing is especially important for those children who find phonics difficult. They need extra practice using phonics, not less. Otherwise they learn to rely on other strategies, such as guessing words from context, that they find easier, and those strategies fail them when they are older.   That is why interventions to support learners who need extra help should not teach strategies that involve guessing.   A second point: The phrase ‘segmenting phonemes’ is used incorrectly in the Estyn report. Segmenting (taking apart) is for spelling, not reading, and it is whole words that are segmented for spelling, not phonemes. For reading, phonemes are blended (put together). To explain more, a phoneme is a small unit of sound, so segmenting phonemes means dividing them into even smaller units, which does not make sense.
Published schemes   Nearly all primary schools use published schemes to support their teaching of phonics ... (85)	Schools ... should ensure their programme meets the guidance on good SSP teaching in this document.	Estyn states that nearly all primary schools use published schemes. However, there is no assurance as to their quality, because the government in Wales provides no guidance about how to choose an effective phonics programme.
Phonological awareness, rhymes and phonemes   In a few schools, learners do not always have a secure enough awareness of rhyme, syllables, onset-rime and stress patterns in words, upon which to build their knowledge of phonemes.  (33)   Most non-maintained settings and nursery schools focus strongly on developing children’s pre-reading skills, including their phonological awareness through songs, rhymes and music. (82)   Staff do not take sufficient account of learners’ developmental stages before the formal introduction of phonics teaching.  This means that, for learners with underdeveloped language and communication skills, such as poor phonological awareness, they struggle to make the link between letters and sounds.  (85)   Across languages, children’s phonological awareness is an important contributing factor to their reading and spelling development (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005). Phonological awareness is the ability to distinguish features of speech, such as syllables, onset-rime and phonemes. It is important that children develop phonological awareness of rhyme, syllables and stress patterns in words, as this is related to their later ability to read fluently (Harper, 2011; Law et al., 2017). This is because awareness of syllables and rhymes develops prior to literacy across languages, whereas phonemic awareness does not. Phonemic awareness is dependent entirely on teaching because the phoneme is not a natural unit of speech.  (19, Research section)   Work with young children has revealed that sensory cues, such as music and poetry, help them to develop their awareness of rhyme, syllables and stress patterns in words. Drumming to different beat structures in music, clapping out the syllable structure of poems and marching to the beat patterns in nursery rhymes all enhance language processing and help struggling readers (Goswami, 2018). When starting school, a child with poor phonological awareness will have more difficulty in learning to read. Learners with poor phonological skills and reduced sensitivity to rhythm are at risk of dyslexia in all languages (Goswami, 2015).  (20, Research section)	Learning rhymes, poems and songs is an end in itself. However, learning poems including traditional nursery rhymes ... can also heighten children’s awareness of the individual sounds within words through alliteration, assonance and rhyme.   Learning to read and write letters develops phonemic awareness rapidly. It seems easier for children to identify phonemes in words when they know how they correspond to letters, because letters provide visible and concrete symbols for sounds.	Both Estyn and the DfE recognise the importance of children learning rhymes, The DfE explains that this is an end in itself, but agrees that it can also heighten children’s awareness of sounds that make up words.   However, the Estyn report includes excessive detail about the importance of phonological awareness for reading. For evidence, it refers to Goswami’s research, which concludes that it is important for children to develop phonological awareness before being taught to read.   Estyn and Goswami are wrong. Numerous studies and research evidence contradict this notion. For example:   ‘PA [phonemic awareness] instruction with letters produced larger effects on PA and reading than instruction without letters’, Ehri LC and others (2001).   Johnston R and Watson J (2004). ‘Accelerating the development of reading, spelling and phonemic awareness skills in initial readers’ Reading and writing: an interdisciplinary journal: volume 17, number 4, pages 327–357.  ‘... phonological awareness intervention that focused on rhyme awareness, syllable segmentation, & initial phoneme discrimination had little effect on the later literacy acquisition of children from low-SES backgrounds.’ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16389704/   ‘The weight of current evidence suggests that rhyme awareness is not related to phoneme awareness, nor does rime training appear to affect the development of phoneme awareness. Instead it seems alphabetic instruction plays a key.’ Macmillan, B. M. (2002) ‘Rhyme and reading: A critical review of the research methodology.’ Rhyme and reading: a critical review of the research methodology   (The onset of a word is the consonant sound or sounds at the beginning of the word, e.g., ‘spl’ at the beginning of ‘splash’ and the rime is the part with a vowel and any consonant sounds that come after it, e.g. ‘ash’ at the end of ‘splash’.)
When to begin teaching phonics   When appropriate for a learner, the teaching of phonics should be systematic and consistent ...	Daily phonics sessions should begin as soon as children start their Reception year.   Some children need extra support from the beginning. Assessment should identify such children as soon as they begin to fall behind their peers ... To enable children to keep up, they should be given extra practice, either in a small group or one-to-one ...	It is unwise to wait for a time that is ‘appropriate for a learner’ to begin teaching phonics. For some children, the appropriate time may never come and they fall further and further behind their peers. When they are older, they are often provided with intervention lessons, but by this stage their learning and self-esteem have suffered.   This can be avoided by teaching all children systematically when they start school, and immediately providing extra help for those at risk of falling behind.

Rob Randel