A recent article in The Guardian newspaper reports on markedly improved results for students being taught to read using phonics. The Education Editor, Richard Adams, wrote:

The embrace of phonics to teach the youngest primary school pupils to read appears to be paying dividends after new figures showed a rise in the number of pupils passing the government’s benchmarks for literacy in the first and second years of formal schooling.

The results of the government’s controversial phonics check – designed to test how children read and pronounce simple words and sounds – saw a 5% increase in the number of five- and six-year-olds passing the check, with 74% of state school pupils in England reaching the expected standard in 2014.

In contrast, just 58% of pupils were able to correctly pronounce the expected number of words and sounds when the phonics check was first administered in state primary schools nationwide in 2012.

This article supports what the team at http://www.phonics.com have always known. Phonics rules!