Information Leaflets

Letter Names

The three leaflets attached discuss the research on learning letter names and how letter names are used by children when learning letter sounds. It is very important that children know the name of a letter before being taught the most common phoneme (sound) that the letter represents. The first leaflet is entitled  ‘ Letter-Name Knowledge and the Acquisition of Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences‘ the second leaflet is entitled, ‘Graphemes that can represent different phonemes: Grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences‘, the third leaflet is entitled ‘The 44 English phonemes and the different ways they can be spelled: Phoneme-Grapheme correspondences PGC.

Teaching letter names and letter formation

There are three leaflets to guide you. The first leaflet  ‘Activities to develop letter formation on school entry for children 4-5 years of age’  gives practical examples of activities for 4-5 year olds. 

The leaflets – ‘Teaching letter formation from the very start’ and the  ‘CLASSROOM GUIDANCE LEAFLET For children identified as having motor processing difficulties’ are summaries taken from the peer reviewed published paper ‘McMurray, S., Drysdale, J. and Jordan, G. (2009) ‘Motor processing difficulties: guidance for teachers in mainstream classrooms’, Support for Learning, 24(3), pp. 119–125. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9604.2009.01411.x

Understanding morphology and morphemes.

This leaflet provides advice on the importance of the development of morphological and morphemic knowledge in the Foundation Stage and Key Stage One (children 5-8 years of age). It also discusses a misunderstanding about morphemes communicated in a presentation at the DE Conference on 9th December 2025. This leaflet provides guidance to develop teachers’ understanding of morphemes and the development of morphemic knowledge.

Phonics in Northern Ireland: Setting the Record Straight

in 1967 Chall advanced the case for systematic phonics teaching in the beginning reading programme. By the mid 1970s phonics was taught systematically in many schools in Northern Ireland. Phoneme-to-grapheme correspondence was taught first before teaching larger units of sound. To secure phoneme-to-grapheme knowledge the strategies of analysis (analysing the sounds in words) and synthesis (blending sounds together) were used alongside orthographic activities to develop sight word recognition.

What does Shanahan advise with regard to phonics teaching

Professor Shanahan was a member of the sub-group who reported on phonics in the National Reading Panel (NRP), landmark report ‘Teaching Children to Read’, in April 2000
In 2021, Shanahan acknowledged the limitations of relying exclusively on synthetic phonics and suggested that combining synthetic and analytic approaches could benefit more children. He stated: ‘The idea of combining synthetic and analytic phonics instruction violates no research, and if done well, may help more kids to succeed.’

In May 2026 Shanahan, concerned about the over emphasis on phonics teaching stated, ‘Is there really any reason to believe that teaching phonics first or that only teaching phonics for a year or two is a good idea?…….if you have any interest in the science of reading ……then it’s clear those scorched earth approaches are bad pedagogy.’ Read the leaflet to learn more and see the quotes in full. Shanahan provides a list of supporting references.

In June 2026, when asked about his pet peeves, Shanahan highlighted the lack of research evidence supporting the use of decodable texts.
Pet Peeve #10: Those who promote the “science of reading” but then sneak in approaches not supported by research.
‘I’m happy that parents, school boards, and state legislatures are championing the science of reading. Unfortunately, not everyone who promotes that idea is especially serious about it. They insist on following the science when it comes to phonics, but then sneak in stuff like sound walls, decodable texts, extra heavy doses of phonemic awareness instruction, and whole book teaching with no science in sight’
https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/do-you-have-any-pet-peeves-about-reading-here-are-my-top-ten

DfE Statistics and Reading Standards

This leaflet discusses the DfE statistics on the reading standards and the Phonics Screening Check at the end of Year 2 in England from 2016-2023. Key Stage 1 in England is from Reception to the end of Year 2 when children are 6-7 year of age. The percentage of children who failed GCSE English Language in England and N. Ireland in 2026 is compared, and issues with the reporting of the PIRLS 2021 findings are highlighted.
Further information not in the leaflet
The Phonics Screening Check
According to the Education Policy Institute EPI report since the introduction of the DfE (2019) Phonics Screening Check (PSC) there is no evidence of improved Key Stage 1 (end of Year 2 England) or Key Stage 2 (end of year 6 England) reading results, and no evidence that the PSC narrowed the attainment gap at the end of Year 2 (children 6–7 years of age) or the end of Year 6 (children10–11 years of age). In addition to this the EPI report concludes that neither national data from the International Reading Panel Study (PIRLS, 2021), previous research using the NPD (National Pupil Database), or the new analysis in the EPI report, find a discernible positive impact of the Phonics Screening Check on the reading levels of primary aged children in England.
Education Policy Institute [EPI]. (2024). What can quantitative analyses tell
us about the national impact of the phonics screening check?. Available online
at: https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/what-can-quantitative-analysestell-us-about-the-national-impact-of-the-phonics-screening-check
PISA 2025– England’s result
England met the OECD’s participation targets in 2025, which it did not in 2022. In 2022 England’s own report said higher-performing pupils were probably over-represented, and the OECD estimated an upward bias of about 7–8 points on some results.
For 2025 there are still reasons to be cautious about England’s result
No attainment check: this cohort sat no Key Stage 2 tests (cancelled in 2021), so the report could not check whether the pupils who sat PISA had higher prior attainment. That is the check that found the bias in England’s 2018 and 2022 results. Because 2025 cannot be checked, ‘no change since 2022’ should be read with care.
Who was missing: pupils who did not sit were more likely to have had free school meals and to get SEN support.
Selective schools: pupils in selective schools were more likely to take part. Weighting reduced this but did not correct for which pupils were absent within a school.
Exclusions: 7.6%, above the OECD’s 5% limit and up from 4.9% in 2022.

 SSP Research Evidence

There is no robust research evidence that has found that systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) is better that any other form of systematic phonics. This is confirmed by the lack of research evidence and the frequently quoted Johnston and Watson (2005) study which has significant methodological flaws. Read the leaflet to understand what these flaws are and why the findings of the study are unreliable.

What Constitutes Valid Research

Valid research uses appropriate and rigorous methods to answer a clearly defined research question and produces findings that are supported by the evidence collected. It should minimise bias, use reliable and valid measures, employ an appropriate sample and comparison where relevant, and analyse the data using suitable methods. Conclusions should accurately reflect the results, including the size and uncertainty of any effects, rather than overstating what the evidence demonstrates. Research should also be sufficiently transparent and reproducible to allow its methods, limitations and conclusions to be critically evaluated.
To understand effect sizes and p-values read the attached leaflet. The leaflet also provides an example of robust research.

Evidence of Awareness of Orthographic Issues

‘Orthographic processing is how you identify and form orthographic units, commit them to memory and retrieve them. It is the cognitive process that enables the detection of letter patterns representing a whole word, patterns within words (onset and rime), syllables, and rules and regularities in print, by attending to each letter whilst also noting letter sequences in parallel as units, thus enabling these orthographic units to be stored in memory. This learning can be acquired implicitly from reading experience. However, children with poor orthographic processing require orthographic mappings to be explicitly taught. McMurray (2004, 2020) provides evidence that spelling is the vehicle that can provide the level of systematic teaching needed.’ (McMurray, Morrow and Bower (2026, p3) – Read Full Research Paper Teaching orthographic mappings requires the systematic teaching of orthographic patterns consisting of more that the one phoneme (onsets, rimes, syllables).

Learning to Spell

The science of spelling since the early 1990s converges on a multi-component parallel-development account of spelling, in which phonological, orthographic and morphological knowledge each contribute independently and develop in tandem from the earliest years of schooling. Stage models such as Gentry’s stage model of spelling development, first published over 40 years ago in 1985, is not supported by the body of research evidence that has accumulated since the early 1990s.

It is also important that teachers understand that etymology should not be grouped with phonology, morphology and orthography. Teachers need to understand the difference. Phonology, morphology and orthography are the linguistic systems that underpin written language development, in particular spelling, and children must internalise them and become consciously aware of them in order to read and spell. Etymology is knowledge about the historical origins of words; it is a useful pedagogical scaffold for teaching morphology and orthography in the upper primary years, but it is not itself a linguistic system the child must acquire.
In this 20 minute video Professor Usha Goswami from Cambridge University discusses her Ph.D research on the use of orthographic analogies when learning to read. This video is very helpful in understanding the complexities of English orthography.

Why SSP works for some children and not for others.

Systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) is a relatively narrow approach to phonics teaching, focusing primarily on phoneme–grapheme correspondences and phoneme-by-phoneme decoding. This approach is particularly well suited to transparent orthographies, where sound–spelling relationships are highly consistent. English, however, has a much more complex orthography, in which the same phoneme can be represented by several different graphemes and the same grapheme can represent different phonemes.

To ensure that all children develop an effective strategy for reading and spelling, phonics teaching needs to extend beyond individual phoneme–grapheme correspondences to include larger, recurring orthographic patterns.
These leaflets examine strategies commonly used within systematic synthetic phonics programmes that can be problematic for children with poor orthographic processing. These children can often be identified by weak sight-word recognition, an over-reliance on phoneme-by-phoneme decoding, dysfluent reading, and phonologically plausible spelling in which they select an incorrect grapheme for phonemes that have multiple possible spellings.