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Re: This is a MUST WATCH video of IFERI committee members giving evidence in Scotland - but relevant internationally

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 1:37 pm
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
Anne Glennie has provided an update re the scenario in Scotland. Anne has made the following announcement via Twitter and has included the link to her submission below:
*Petition Update* 'The Committee agreed to write to the Deputy First Minister and initial teacher education institutions
http://www.parliament.scot/S5_PublicPet ... 1668_H.pdf

Anne's submission, link above, is essential reading not only for people living in Scotland, but for people living all across the world where the English language is taught via the written form.

Please read Anne's complete submission, it is not long, and here is a flavour of it, this is her introduction:

PE1668/H
Petitioner submission of 11 January 2018

While Mr Swinney may believe that Curriculum for Excellence is non-prescriptive, it does in fact promote mixed methods with its inclusion of sight words, letter names, context clues and multi-cueing – all of which have been shown through research to be detrimental to beginning readers. Currently, there is very little national guidance available to teachers in Scotland about beginning reading instruction. Rather than being led by research, teachers rely instead on commercial resources such as reading schemes and books. Simply repeating that teachers are empowered does not make it so. Teachers may have professional freedom to choose their methods, but they can only be truly empowered if they have the necessary knowledge of reading pedagogy, awareness of current reading research, an understanding of how children learn to read, and suitable resources to help them take this forward in the classroom. Without this knowledge, it is impossible for teachers to evaluate resources or tailor teaching effectively to suit classes or individuals.

A curricular approach should support teachers and children with the information they require. To prioritise the philosophy of a curriculum and teachers’ professionalism over children’s progress, indicates clear confusion on the part of the Deputy First Minister of the purpose of schooling in the first place. Society relies on us, parents rely on us, and indeed expect us, to teach their children to read. We are failing in this fundamental duty.
The scenario in Scotland is not untypical of other countries. We have shown through our IFERI forum and blog that the issue of teacher-training, and foundational literacy provision in our schools internationally is still not resolved.

Please inform your friends and colleagues about the reading debate and point them in the direction of the IFERI site.

I have retweeted Anne's latest information with this comment - only time will tell if Scotland gets its teacher-training act together:
Anne, the position is that one should be able to hold those in authority to account with the hot information in your submissions. The question is, how does one truly achieve this? Are those in authority actually unaccountable? This is HUGE.

Re: This is a MUST WATCH video of IFERI committee members giving evidence in Scotland - but relevant internationally

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 12:29 pm
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
This piece in the Sunday Herald, Scotland, is entirely relevant to Anne Glennie's work in Scotland - attempting to hold those in authority to account for inadequate teacher-training - not fully informed by a body of research into reading instruction:
31st March

Monitoring of Scottish schools "woefully inadequate" warns top academic

Andrew Denholm

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/1612 ... ref=twtrec

The piece also shows the direction of travel, and the consequences, of reliance on subjective teacher assessment along with abandonment of national standardised assessment. There is a role for both - but the teacher assessment is more appropriate for within-school purposes whilst the general public is informed from simple snapshot objective assessment.

How very tragic that in the UK, it is only England that is bound by law to use the end of Year One Phonics Screening Check. What would the picture be if the same check was used throughout the UK?

It is at the very beginning of teaching reading and writing that we can establish the best foundations for children and work to close that socio-economic gap educationally at least.

Re: This is a MUST WATCH video of IFERI committee members giving evidence in Scotland - but relevant internationally

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2018 11:41 am
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
21st August 2018, Anne Glennie tweets her alarm re the launch of Reading Recovery in Scotland:
I actually feel physically sick reading this 'news' about Reading Recovery launching in Scotland. No longer funded in its place of birth (New Zealand) but we're lapping it up here. #despair http://www.gtcs.org.uk/News/teaching-sc ... overy.aspx … @tombennett71
Strong warnings about the effect of Reading Recovery in New Zealand, home of Reading Recovery:

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... f=3&t=1006

Re: This is a MUST WATCH video of IFERI committee members giving evidence in Scotland - but relevant internationally

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2018 12:37 pm
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
The BBC news reports about declining standards in literacy in Scotland. Are we surprised?
Figures show drop in Scottish pupil literacy rates
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... s-39856284
The literacy skills of Scottish school pupils have fallen over the past four years, according to figures published by the Scottish government.

The Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy found that less than half of Scotland's 13 and 14-year-olds are now performing well in writing.

P4 and P7 pupils also saw a drop in writing performance.

The reading ability of P4, P7 and S2 pupils remains broadly similar to 2014 - but lower than 2012.

And there has been no reduction in the big gap between the performance of the country's wealthiest and most deprived pupils.

Re: This is a MUST WATCH video of IFERI committee members giving evidence in Scotland - but relevant internationally

Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2018 5:36 pm
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
Here is a fantastic and important article in Teaching Scotland thanks to the request of Alison Taylor to include a piece featuring the science of reading. The article includes reference to Anne Glennie's petition and to training provided by Dr Sarah McGeown. Well done, Alison Taylor, for instigating this great development building on the work of Anne Glennie, Kathy Rastle and colleagues, and Dr Sarah McGeown.

Do read the whole piece:
The science of reading

Reading is recognised as a fundamental skill that should be acquired by children early in their learning. Here we explore the continuing debate over how this skill is best taught to our young learners, examining the case for systematic synthetic phonics
https://iferi.org/wp-content/uploads/20 ... eading.pdf
What next for Scotland?

Sometimes referred to as “the great equaliser”, both Dr McGeown and Professor Rastle stressed that, if implemented at an early stage, phonics has the ability to put children on a more level playing field, helping to reduce the Matthew Effect which sees the attainment gap widen over time.

Alison, too, feels passionately that if more teachers learned about the science of reading, our learners could have better outcomes.

“The statistics show that up to 60 per cent of children learning the English language will learn to read however you teach them. But that means 40 per cent won’t, unless you explicitly teach them how the alphabetic code works.”

Alison is keen to see a change in teacher education. She says: “It’s not because teachers are bad teachers, it’s just that they haven’t been taught about the alphabetic code.”

Literacy Consultant and Trainer Anne Glennie, who runs the course Phonics Forever which Alison attended, lodged a petition in August 2017 calling for national guidance, support, and professional learning for teachers in research-informed reading instruction, specifically systematic synthetic phonics; and for teacher training institutions to train new teachers in research- informed reading instruction, specifically systematic synthetic phonics.

In Anne Glennie’s view, a “teaching gap” existsin Scotland, largely because current advice given by Education Scotland does not draw on the latest international research and reinforces “the status quo”; “reading practice in primary schools is led by resources”; and “new teachers are not trained in current, evidence- based reading pedagogy”.

Dr McGeown, speaking for the petition at the Scottish Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee, made the important point: “This is not about removing teacher autonomy and it’s not about implementing a prescriptive approach to the teaching of reading. This is about empowering teachers by ensuring [they] have access to the most up-to-date research on children’s reading instruction and then allowing them to make decisions about how best to apply this.”
GTCS WEBINAR

Dr McGeown will deliver a GTCS webinar on “The Science of Reading” on 13 December. Join us online from 4pm to learn more about systematic synthetics phonics, the alphabetic code, the big five and more. Send your questions in advance to teachingscotland@ gtcs.org.uk

Read Professor Kathy Rastle’s paper at: bit.ly/ending- the-reading-wars

Watch the keynote at: bit.ly/ending-the-reading-wars- keynote

Contact Kathy Rastle at  Kathy.Rastle@rhul.ac.uk and Sarah McGeown at  S.McGeown@ed.ac.uk

Re: This is a MUST WATCH video of IFERI committee members giving evidence in Scotland - but relevant internationally

Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2018 5:52 pm
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
Here is a link to the full Teaching Scotland magazine which includes the letter from Alison Taylor expressing her worries about the implementation of Reading Recovery in Scotland and the lack of training for research-informed methods.

See Alison Taylor's later to the Editor on page 8 - it's easy to click and turn the pages:

http://edition.pagesuite-professional.c ... 51b7ede658

Re: This is a MUST WATCH video of IFERI committee members giving evidence in Scotland - but relevant internationally

Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:23 pm
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
Anne Glennie is rightly alarmed by the selection of Sue Ellis and David Reedy to advise on assessment in Scotland. She has described why, here:
P1 TESTING: FROM CATASTROPHE TO CONSPIRACY?

As the P1 testing debacle rumbles on, John Swinney is stumbling head-first into another education fiasco – although perhaps even he is unaware of the harmful scenario he is presiding over.
http://www.thelearningzoo.co.uk/2019/04 ... onspiracy/

Here is an extract from Anne's detailed and referenced explanation for her alarm:
Academic knowledge brokers? Seriously?

You can read the Scottish National Standardised Assessments: recommendations from P1 Practitioner Forum report in full here6. The word ‘phonics’ doesn’t even appear once in this report. But given that the forum is ‘independently chaired’ by Professor Sue Ellis, this is not a surprise.

Prof Ellis is widely recognised as an SSP opponent and a critic of the internationally-renowned Clackmannanshire research7 (Ellis & Moss, 2013). Prof Ellis has published many papers, articles and comments throughout her career, which undermine and underplay the importance and significance of phonics in beginning reading instruction. Prof Ellis is a whole-language advocate and continues to train both student teachers, and currently serving teachers, in out-dated methodologies such as running records, miscue analysis and multi-cueing.

But perhaps the entirely separate and independent review of P1 assessments, ordered by John Swinney, will offer an impartial assessment, and therefore some hope of a research-informed solution to P1 testing?

Alas, no. This ‘independent’ review is to be led by David Reedy. The name will perhaps be unfamiliar to you, as he lives and works in England. The name for me however, set alarm bells ringing. Being involved in the fight for phonics and reading instruction based on scientific findings, means I know who the key players and influencers are. David Reedy, is General Secretary and Immediate Past President of the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) – an organisation that is known to be anti-phonics. Mr Reedy himself has written an article about why he believes that England should scrap the phonics screener, erroneously titled: Is it time to ditch the Y1 Phonics Screening Test?8

And despite this review sounding as if it might actually be ‘independent’ – David Reedy is also in attendance at the P1 Practitioner Forum Meetings9.

Please read the whole piece. The questions Anne raises with regard to official events in Scotland and what is happening at the chalk-face are so important.

Re: This is a MUST WATCH video of IFERI committee members giving evidence in Scotland - but relevant internationally

Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2019 5:43 pm
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
Here is news of further developments about Anne's petition. Education Minister, John Swinney, responded and Anne Glennie has written further submissions. Anne has provided a link to her latest submission as this is a serious matter that should be in the public domain. Please follow the link and read John Swinney's position and Anne's latest response.

Anne is fully supported by the International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction. Please read her outstanding reply to John Swinney which is now in the public domain. Whoever thinks the 'reading wars' are over is not right:
The Swindmills of Your Mind: Responding to John Swinney’s Edu-Speak
http://www.thelearningzoo.co.uk/2019/06 ... edu-speak/

Anne summarises:
A child learns to read once in their life – we now have robust evidence through scientific enquiry that means we know exactly what to do to ensure that we get this right for every child. With the challenge of the attainment gap, there has never been a more important time to act. Every child in Scotland has a right to be taught how to read. All children, including those with reading difficulties and dyslexia, should be taught using the most up-to-date scientifically proven methodologies – failure to do so amounts to professional negligence and I believe that parents will begin to resort to legal action to hold schools and authorities to account, as has been the case in other countries.

I implore the committee to seek out and listen to the real experts and researchers in this matter, such as Dr Sarah McGeown, Professor Kathy Rastle, and those listed below.

cc public domain

This submission is supported by the following international colleagues, researchers, and academics working in the field of reading instruction in English:

Dr Jennifer Buckingham (Australia)

Professor James Chapman, Institute of Education, Massey University (New Zealand)

Dr Molly de Lemos AM, BSc (Hons), MSc (Natal), PhD (ANU), MAPsS (Australia)

Nancy Duggan, M.S.C., Executive Director, Decoding Dyslexia MA (USA)

Dr Steven Dykstra (USA)

Margie B. Gillis, Ed.D. (USA)

Susan Godsland, dyslexics.org (UK)

Dr Kerry Hempenstall, Senior Industry Fellow, School of Education, RMIT University (Australia)

Debbie Hepplewhite, MBE, FRSA (UK)

Dr Sarah McGeown, Moray House School of Education, Edinburgh University (UK)

Dianne Murphy, Thinking Reading (UK)

James Murphy, Thinking Reading (UK)

Sir Jim Rose, CBE, FRSA – Doctor of Laws – Formerly Her Majesty’s Inspector and Director of Inspection for the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) (England)

Dr Linda Siegel (Canada)

Professor Pamela Snow, PhD, FSPA, MAPS (Australia)

Michael Stark, Director and Trustee, Educators International (UK)

Abigail Steel, BA Hons, PTE, LLB (UK)

Laura Stewart (USA)

The Right Honorable Robert W. Sweet, Jr (USA)

Distinguished Professor Emeritus William E. Tunmer, PhD, Massey University (New Zealand)

Grace Vilar (South America)

Emeritus Professor Kevin Wheldall AM (Australia)

1 http://www.nichd.nih.gov/research/suppo ... /nrp.aspx/

2 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.117 ... 0618772271

3 https://www.gtcs.org.uk/News/teaching-s ... ading.aspx

You can read the whole saga and all of the back-and-forth submissions here

Re: This is a MUST WATCH video of IFERI committee members giving evidence in Scotland - but relevant internationally

Posted: Fri Jun 28, 2019 12:33 am
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
https://researched.org.uk/ambitious-rhe ... lls-short/
Ambitious rhetoric but the reality falls short

24th June 2019//by Walter Humes

Education in Scotland is often trumpeted by some as exemplary, with other countries – such as Wales – using it as a template from which to build their own systems. But recent years have seen troubling levels of unhappiness in the education community about the reality of delivering the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) – the once-lauded program of educational reinvention that was supposed to revolutionise the learning of a nation’s children. Here, Walter Humes looks at some of the problems with the CfE, and what went wrong.



Re: This is a MUST WATCH video of IFERI committee members giving evidence in Scotland - but relevant internationally

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 11:50 am
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
Here is the latest update (30th October 2019) regarding Anne Glennie's petition:

https://twitter.com/anneglennie/status/ ... 9948047366