Reading aloud is not necessarily 'reading'.

Here we go again:

People looking at the Key Stage 1 'exemplifications' for 2016 will see this:

"• read accurately by blending the sounds in words that contain the common graphemes for all 40+ phonemes*"

This is a 'reading-aloud test', isn't it? But as I boringly keep saying, a reading-aloud test is only a test on whether children can make the sounds generally agreed on for a given set of letters. The govt usually calls that 'decoding'. Reading is something we do when we read - to ourselves or to others - and understand it. It's not the same thing as that blurting out what you see because you've picked up the principles of the 'alphabetic code' as they call it.


So why is the govt calling it reading?

Because it's necessary for them to try to kid as many people as possible that doing phonics is reading. It's not. Reading comes about as a result of reading for meaning.

[Here's the full document: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/515358/STA-Ex2016-KS1-ER-WT.pdf ]