Minister’s reading test gets poor marks from top educators

In an open letter to Education Secretary Michael Gove, 19 signatories said they were “deeply concerned” about the test – and called on him to reconsider its introduction.

Yesterday’s letter was signed by David Reedy, the immediate past president of the United Kingdom Literacy Association, with support from others including Philip Parkin, general secretary of the education union Voice, John Coe, chairman of the National Association for Primary Education and Rona Tutt, chair of the National Literacy Association.

Plans for a reading test for six-year-olds were announced by the Department for Education (DfE) at the end of last year, amid concerns that children with poor reading skills were slipping through the net.

Pupils are asked to sound out or decode a series of words, some of which are “made up”, to test their reading skills.

The test is based on phonics, which focuses on sounds rather than having children try to recognise whole words.

Last month, a Government-commissioned report on a pilot of the test found that while two-fifths of teachers said the check had helped them identify struggling youngsters, there were also some concerns.

The research found 72 per cent of pilot schools said “pseudo words” caused confusion for some, or most, of their pupils.

More than half of schools did not think the test helped to identify pupils with reading problems.

And while three-quarters of schools said the check was accurate overall for their pupils, fewer than half of teachers were confident that the check was accurate for lower-performing pupils, those with special educational needs, those who speak English as an additional language and those with language difficulties.

The open letter to Mr Gove said: “Many of our original fears have been confirmed by the evaluation report and the undersigned remain deeply concerned about the imposition of this test on all schools in England.”

It says that the finding about “pseudo-words” confirms their worries that a reading test based only on decoding could harm standards in the long term.