England has spent over a decade mandating systematic synthetic phonics in early reading instruction. The intention was clear: teach children how speech sounds connect to print so they can decode words and become confident readers.
 

But the outcomes tell a different story.

Around 1 in 5 children still cannot pass the Phonics Screening Check (PSC) after two years of following Department for Education validated programmes. By the end of Key Stage 2, around 1 in 4 children are not reading at the expected level.

At the same time, reading for pleasure among children has fallen to the lowest level in twenty years.

Something is not working as intended.

What the Phonics Screening Check Actually Measures

The PSC checks whether children can decode words using roughly 100 grapheme–phoneme correspondences that are explicitly taught in phonics programmes.

This is only a small part of the English writing system. Even in Key Stage 1, children will need to navigate over 300 ways that speech sounds connect to print.

The check was designed to confirm that children have grasped the alphabetic principle, the idea that letters represent speech sounds. Once that principle is understood, phonics should act as a kick-start to self-teaching. Through exposure to print, children begin recognising patterns, applying statistical learning, and building a large orthographic lexicon.

That is the theory.

But for many children, the process breaks down before it even begins.

The Missing Foundation

Many children who struggle with phonics are not struggling because they have not been taught the rules.

They are struggling because of differences in speech sound processing and phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, isolate, and manipulate the individual speech sounds within words. Without this ability, phonics instruction can feel confusing rather than helpful.

Phonics programmes often assume that phonemic awareness will develop naturally once grapheme–phoneme correspondences are introduced. For many children this is true.

For others, it is not.

These children are effectively being asked to connect speech and print before their brains can reliably process the sounds within speech itself.

In simple terms, you cannot hammer a screw and then complain that only the nails connect with the wood.

Waiting Too Long to Identify the Problem

In England, children are usually introduced to formal phonics instruction in Reception and are assessed with the Phonics Screening Check at the end of Year 1.

By this point, the system is already reacting to difficulties rather than preventing them.

Yet speech sound processing differences can often be detected years earlier.

With early screening and appropriate support, many children who would otherwise struggle with phonics can develop the underlying skills they need before reading instruction begins.

When this happens, phonics becomes what it was intended to be: a bridge between speech and print, rather than a barrier.

When Phonics Works

When children have good phonemic awareness they are able to understand how phonemes connect to graphemes, reading accelerates quickly.

Their brains begin recognising patterns across words. They start identifying correspondences that were never explicitly taught. This process is known as self-teaching.

 

Once children reach this stage, their reading development becomes largely self-propelling.

They encounter new words through implicit learning, test hypotheses about how sounds map to letters, and gradually build a rich mental dictionary of spellings and meanings.

This is how fluent reading develops.

The Consequences of Getting It Wrong

When phonics instruction does not match a child’s underlying speech sound processing abilities, the consequences are significant.

Children may struggle to decode even simple words. Reading becomes effortful rather than automatic. Confidence drops. Books become something to avoid rather than enjoy.

This has long-term consequences for learning.

It is difficult to find pleasure in something you cannot do, and difficult to develop strong comprehension if decoding remains slow and uncertain.

This helps explain why so many children in England report that they do not enjoy reading, even when schools have focused heavily on reading instruction.

Why Reform Is Needed

Phonics itself is not the problem.

 

The problem is how phonics is currently implemented.

Current approaches are not identifying speech sound processing differences early enough. They are not designed to adapt to the pace at which individual children develop phonemic awareness. And they often rely on remedial support after difficulties appear rather than preventing them in the first place.

The Department for Education has claimed that current policy “offers sufficient support for all children to become fluent readers”.

The data does not support that claim.

What Phonics Reform England Advocates

Phonics Reform England (PRE) calls for five connected reforms.
 

First, early screening for speech sound processing and dyslexia risk pre-phonics.
Children who find it difficult to process speech sounds can often be identified before phonics instruction begins. Early screening allows support to be provided before reading failure occurs, rather than waiting until difficulties appear in school. We use Phonemies because they are speech sound symbols used instead of IPA phonetic symbols, allowing non-speaking children to demonstrate the sounds they hear in words. Phonemies (Speech Sound Monsters) help children see the most common sound value connected to graphemes in words. They can change the Phonemies if they use different sounds because of their accent. To our knowledge, no-one else has developed a system that provides accessible phoneme symbols for this purpose.
When the underlying speech sound processing difficulties are identified and addressed early, children are far more able to benefit from phonics instruction, preventing the dyslexia paradox.

Second, phonics instruction that is self-paced.
Children develop phonemic awareness and speech sound processing skills at different rates. Phonics instruction should allow learners to consolidate speech sound knowledge before progressing through new correspondences rather than assuming all children will move through the same sequence at the same speed. Self-paced learning ensures that children understand how speech sounds connect to print before new material is introduced. 

Third, explicit bidirectional phoneme–grapheme mapping.
Children need to understand how speech connects to print in both directions: reading (print to speech) and spelling (speech to print). When these mappings are clear, phonics becomes a stepping stone to the self-teaching phase of reading. Learners begin recognising patterns across words and using statistical learning to expand their knowledge of the writing system. We argue that an initial short ‘Phase 1’ pre-phonics stage, for example the Ten Day Speech Sound Play Plan is useful for all children and essential for those at risk. Introducing speech sounds first makes learning phonics easier for everyone. 
The DfE has previously suggested that SSP programme developers remove a focus on sounds before phonics during the validation process.

Fourth, universal access to technology that makes the code visible.
Every learner should have access to tools that clearly show which letters form graphemes and what sound value they represent. The Department for Education expects teachers to support children in identifying grapheme–phoneme correspondences, during reading and spelling activities throughout the day, but in practice this can be difficult to provide consistently across classrooms. Word Mapping Technology can make these relationships explicit so children can explore how speech and print connect independently. MyWordz® is currently being considered for the Department for Education’s EdTech Impact Testbed, which evaluates education technologies that can improve learning outcomes in real classroom settings.

Fifth, earlier exposure to engaging decodable readers where the code is visible.
Children in England could begin reading decodable levelled readers from the second term of Reception, after exposure to word mapping with graphemes that allow them to decode and encode many words and understand key concepts, such as that graphemes can represent different sounds (c as in cat, c as in cent), that graphemes can have more than one letter (hill, hiss), and that graphemes can consist of two different letters, for example ck together still representing the /k/ sound. Most children in England do this by covering s a t p i n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f l ll ss in Term 1.

At the same time,from term 1, they continue learning the remaining Core Code GPCs explicitly until they have mastered the roughly 100 tested in the PSC.  An example GPC teaching progession based on Letters and Sounds can be seen here. 
These particular decodable levelled readers allow them to be exposed to the wider code of 200+, including high-frequency words, within meaningful stories. In these books the text is coded to show which letters form graphemes and what sound value they represent. This reduces cognitive load and allows children to see how speech and print connect for correspondences not yet taught in phonics.

Because the code is visible, children can develop important reading behaviours such as recoding and set for variability rather than simply trying to labour through every word with limited knowledge of the code. The books are initially predictable and repetitive, helping children anticipate patterns while building confidence. At the same time they are written to engage young readers, because they were created by an acclaimed children’s author who understood how children become readers, not simply children who can decode.

A Preventable Problem

The reading difficulties many children experience in England are not inevitable.
 

They are often the result of a system that identifies problems too late and responds with interventions rather than prevention.

With earlier screening, better understanding of speech sound processing, and phonics instruction that adapts to the child rather than the programme, many of these difficulties could be avoided.

That is why Phonics Reform England exists.

Because the goal is not simply passing a test.

The goal is ensuring that every child has the opportunity to become a fluent, confident reader.