in brief... Children's reading: evaluating a new teaching method

Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Martina Viarengo

CentrePiece - The magazine for economic performance from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: Children at risk of struggling with their reading get long-term benefits from 'synthetic phonics', the current favoured method among education policy-makers in England. The benefits for disadvantaged pupils justify the fixed cost of a year's intensive training support to teachers. These are the conclusions of research by Sandra McNally and colleagues, which evaluates the effectiveness of synthetic phonics in improving children's literacy. They find that teaching reading this way helps children from poorer backgrounds or those who do not have English as a first language. But on average, a government policy that requires all primary schools to use the method has had no measurable effect on pupils' reading scores at age 11.

Keywords: Education; synthetic phonics; reading; education attainment; government policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepcnp:472

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