[senco-forum] Re Literacy

Of course, there are plenty of individual cases of successful intervention. I continue to do this kind of work myself and I know how important it is to those who are helped to literacy by it.  But I also know that these interventions, however successful, do not, cannot and will not even slightly dent the problem of the 118,000 illiterates we produce annually.  About 90,000 of these children could have learned to read by age 7 had their initial teaching been more effective and their chances of becoming part of the prison overpopulation problem would have been at least, very significantly reduced.  But that just isn't happening and its left to people like the Shannon Trust with their pitiful budgets, to try to pick up the pieces while vast sums are spent supporting an SEN empire created to confront this problem yet which does not even accept that it is their problem, let alone contribute to its resolution!

Prevention is still better than cure, even if 'cures' were available, and the most effective preventative strategy is appropriate instruction in the early years of their schooling which teaches them the sounds the letters make and how to synthesize these sounds into meaningful words. This has come to be known as Synthetic Phonics to differentiate it from analytic phonics but it not new and it is not rocket science. It is also not happening and the proof is that another 118,000 children will either enter the workforce or more likely, sign on to the dole again this year, unable to read.

Eddie C.