Next week, I'm proud to announce that we'll be failing thousands of 5 and 6 year olds: children unable to decode more than 31 out of 40 words, some 10 of which will be nonsense words that they have never seen before.
The moment we know a child has failed we put into place the TELL-A-PARENT-THEIR-CHILD-IS-A-FAILURE PROGRAMME. By law, every school must tell the parents/carers of the child they have FAILED!!!! Yes, it gets that good.
Now, I've heard that some people are saying that their child is beginning to read USING OTHER METHODS OTHER THAN PHONICS and might fail the screening check.. YESSSS! That's true. But how good is that?! It means that these 'back-door' readers, as I call them, will be summarily told that there is NO BACK DOOR to reading. Only the front door. And the front door is phonics. First, fast and only. And only one kind of phonics. Systematic synthetic phonics, as delivered only by the government approved schemes, which means largely just one scheme, as written by a government adviser. That way lies good practice.
So, let's all look forward to a good week.
And remember, the more children fail, the more Systematic Synthetic Phonics schemes will be bought by worried parents, desperate that their child doesn't FAIL again.
Remember, if you see a child trying to read a book with non-decodable words in it, snatch it off him or her straightaway. Put a stop to it.
We've even heard of children who can't decode, trying to read for meaning, yes, actually trying to understand words that they can't decode. Remember, STOP THEM.
Happy failure week, everyone!
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