Introduction Phonics: the wider picture

Learning to read is a vital foundation to becoming a literate, educated person. Reading offers opportunities for enjoyment, for increasing our knowledge of the world and for enhancing our imagination and creativity. It also gives people access to improved life chances – success or failure in becoming a reader is a strong indicator of future progress in school and beyond. Throughout the developed world therefore governments are giving great priority to literacy and are asking schools to ensure that children reach certain standards of reading achievement. In England, for example, this is manifest in the everincreasing targets set for the number of children reaching the expected reading level for their age group as measured by national tests. In America the No child left behind legislation focuses on literacy teaching and pupil literacy achievement, again measuring children’s performance with state-administered tests. In Australia the government has recently concluded a National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (DEST, 2004) and has called for higher standards of literacy through a set of ‘National Goals’. In the developing world, ensuring high levels of literacy is a priority and there are ambitious plans to support the developing world in achieving the same goal. The United Nations has made the pledge that by 2015 all the world’s children will complete primary schooling and UNESCO has nominated 2003–2012 as the United Nations’ Literacy Decade. Literacy is recognized not only as important for the personal development and life chances of individuals but, also as vital to the spiritual, cultural and economic wellbeing of nations. Given the central importance of literacy in our developed and developing world, it is no surprise therefore that we want to know ‘How best can children be enabled to learn to read and write?’ To try to answer this quesion there has been an Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading ( DfES, 2006a) – hereafter called the Rose Review – in England. A similar review has been undertaken in Australia – Teaching Reading: Report and recommendations (DEST, 2005) – and in the United States, the National Reading Panel was set up in 1997 to investigate the research about the teaching of reading (NRP, 2000b). We will return to these reports later. This perennial question – How best can children be enabled to learn to read and write? – has been asked for many decades. It continues to be asked because