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'Performance of Australian children on the English Phonics Screening Check...' Wheldall et al

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:33 am
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
This is a very important study for Australia. Some people in some regions of Australia are clearly leading the way in trialling an equivalent phonics screening check to England's statutory phonics screening check - they appreciate how significant it is to have a regional and national snapshot of children's alphabetic code knowledge applied to word-level content to measure efficient word-decoding (and efficient teaching of phonics). Congratulations to all concerned.

The description and summary report of this study is straightforward and easy to read. Not only should it be of great interest to people in Australia, it should also be of interest to anyone interested in raising and measuring levels of foundational literacy wherever the English language is taught as a significant part of primary education:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/T5ut ... 19.1635500
Performance of Australian children on the English Phonics Screening Check following systematic synthetic phonics instruction in the first two years of schooling

Kevin Wheldall, Nicola Bell, Robyn Wheldall, Alison Madelaine & Meree Reynolds

Published online: 28th June 2019

ABSTRACT

Recently, there has been debate surrounding the potential implementation of the Phonics Screening Check (PSC) in Australian primary schools. The present study sought to investigate the child- and task-related factors influencing the PSC performances of Year 1 Australian students, who had received almost two years of systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) instruction. Non-parametric between- and within-group comparisons and correlational analyses were conducted to examine whether performance was influenced by gender, age, school site, real word status and item complexity. Approximately 82% of the students obtained or exceeded the South Australian PSC trial threshold of 28 points out of 40, which suggests the students were, on average, developing adequate word-level decoding skills. The only child- and task-related factors to emerge as statistically significant were age and item complexity.

Re: 'Performance of Australian children on the English Phonics Screening Check...' Wheldall et al

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:47 am
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
I have cross-referenced this study via the 'Around the World: News and Events' forum here:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1251

Re: 'Performance of Australian children on the English Phonics Screening Check...' Wheldall et al

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:51 am
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
I've also added a link to the 'Synthetic phonics success stories and projects around the world' forum here:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1252