Mail Online:
Focus on phonics sees reading standards rise to the best in a generation as schools minister hails controversial education reforms
5 December 2017
Previously children were taught using a 'look and say' method, where they were shown words until they could regonise them. However, teaching reading using sounds rather than individual letters has been found to be far more effective by researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE). Young pupils from poorer backgrounds and those whose first language is not English have both been found to advance quicker using synthetic phonics. An assessment of more than 270,000 children by LSE's Centre for Economic Performance, last year, discovered that those who were learning phonetically had developed far better by age seven than those using traditional methods.