This year, the Department for Education has brought in some changes that will impact the teaching of phonics in many schools, as well as the phonic books and resources that will be needed to support it. Our reading scheme specialists have put together some FAQs to help schools ensure their teaching programme is up-to-date with current Ofsted guidance and has the right reading books and resources in place.

Context

The 2007 Letters and Sounds Framework set out to provide schools with a basis for teaching systematic synthetic phonics (SSP). Although this has never been statutory, over 50% of schools use this as the basis of their phonics teaching and it was included on the list of approved phonics programmes on gov.uk. However, it is not, and has never been a full programme setting out in detail how phonics will be taught on a week-by-week basis. It relied upon schools building their own programme of resources around the handbook and in many cases updating the progression