Helping Adults to Read
Last edition Nicholas Vester shared his observations of reading by the sea. This edition ANDREW COLQUHOUN is back for the National Year of Reading.
You can say what you like about Michael Gove. And many teachers would still have much to say about him, not much of it complimentary. But in the National Year of Reading let’s cut him some slack.
In my humble opinion, Lord Gove of The Spectator, or Lord Gove of Torry as they would now call him in the upper house, deserves some credit for raising literacy standards in our schools.
The concept of phonics had been around for a while. But it was Gove as Education Secretary, aided by Dominic Cummings as his short- sighted Sancho Panza and special adviser, who pushed through the introduction of Systematic Synthetic Phonics and mandated its use in the 2014 National Curriculum as the way in which children in England would start to learn to read. And much the same approach is now being used to help adults in Hastings and across the country who missed out on formal schooling to learn to read later in life.
It is difficult to prove cause and effect when there are so many factors at play. But for several years England has been moving up the Pisa league table of international comparisons for educational attainment in reading. There is a good case to be made that the use of phonics has contributed to that progress. It has even been said that, for reading England is now “the best in the West”. This is in contrast to the poor performance of some Welsh schools where the ‘cueing’ system still prevails.
But it is not just in England where the adoption of phonics has generated improvements in literacy standards. Legislators in some of the southern ‘red’ states (ie Republican) of the US have mandated the use of phonics and have got the results to prove it, whereas in the past, Democratic states seemed better at educating their children.
For those whose formal education in the UK is some years behind them and who managed to learn to read by one means or another, phonics might be a bit of a mystery. In the jargon, phonics is a method of teaching reading and writing by developing a learner’s phonemic awareness: the ability to hear, identify and manipulate sounds (phonemes) and connect them to written letters or groups of letters (graphemes). This probably all seems familiar to the current generation of teachers, parents and possibly six year olds.
But a more straightforward definition of phonics comes from the National Literacy Trust (literacytrust.org.uk): “Phonics involves matching the sounds of spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters, for example the sound /k/ can be spelled as k, c, ch, or ck”.
I have recently needed to do some remedial education myself on phonics in order to volunteer in Hastings as a coach for adult literacy with Read Easy, a national charity whose vision is for all the adults in the UK to have the literacy skills they need to fulfil their potential and live life to the full (readeasy.org.uk). Read Easy reckons that there might be 2.4 million adults in England alone who cannot read at all or who can barely read. So pro rata, there must be a considerable number of folk in Hastings and St Leonards who will struggle in this way – with their life chances probably adversely affected as a result.
I can only speak for the systems used in the Hastings operation of Read Easy which was set up as part of a new East Sussex branch in 2023. But after training we are allocated a learner reader to work with on a one-to-one basis for two half-hour sessions per week. We very much use the phonics system manualised by the Shannon Trust (shannontrust.org.uk) which on a step-by-step, page-by-page system, builds from sounding out the letters through to building simple and then more complex words, and onwards to straightforward sentences and specially tailored reading books.
Even if a reader has some basic competence in reading and writing, we always start at page 1 of the manual so that we reduce the risk of gaps in their learning which might only emerge later.
We are not alone as volunteers: a local Hastings and St Leonards group meets regularly to exchange ideas and techniques and to liaise with our two local coordinators. It has been interesting, for example, to hear from others that b and d can get often confused at an early stage by readers because of their similar, if reversed, shapes.
As a newbie volunteer coach working with my reader, I have been impressed by how the phonics system, taken very much at the reader’s own pace, does gradually build not only competence, but also self-confidence for people who might have been dismissed in their school days. It is humbling and inspiring to watch their progress.
If you know an adult who is struggling with their reading and writing, tell them about Read Easy and encourage them to ask for our help. That first step of contacting us might be the most difficult one, but our coaches have the skills and time to get them on the learning journey again. Their first point of contact should be [email protected].
For whatever reason, and fairly or unfairly, some teachers will never forgive Michael Gove for his time as Education Secretary. But at Read Easy we do value the system of phonics which he championed and which is helping our readers to have more fulfilling lives.
Joan is a 75-year-old grandmother who has lived in the Hollington area all her life. She was the youngest in a large family where maybe education wasn’t much valued. And then she was in primary school at a time when classes might have had more than 40 children, so it was easy for those who were struggling to be ignored or not even noticed. By the time Joan got to secondary school, she was way behind where she should have been, so she bunked off or misbehaved in other ways. That made things worse in terms of her learning.
Working in the care sector as an adult she was good at her job and found ways of covering up her lack of ability in reading and writing – until she got promoted and needed to do more paperwork. A new and less sympathetic manager came in and Joan felt that she had to leave, rather than continue to struggle. Now, after retirement, she has the motivation and time to build her reading and writing skills. What she would really like to be able to do is to read to her grandchildren. Step by step, with the phonics system, she is on the way.
Baran came to St Leonards from the Kurdish area of Iraq about five years ago. His spoken English is now pretty good and enables him to function in most aspects of his life. But he grew up with the Sorani way of writing, a modified Arabic form of script for reading and writing, so not the Latin-based alphabet. This has made it more difficult for him to get to grips with reading and writing in English. This problem has held him back from progressing in employment in the way which he would like. Factory work pays the bills, but he would like to achieve more at work and for his family and himself.
Encouraged by a refugee mentor, he contacted Ready Easy locally and was then put in touch with a coach to help him to improve his reading and writing. Over the last two years, Baran has worked with his coach on the Shannon manual approach which provides a systematic and gradual way of building up skills in both reading and writing. He is now able to write messages in good English and has progressed to being able to read simple books. But he remains keen to achieve even more.
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