Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of regional differences in the results of the phonics screening check; and what steps he is taking to reduce such disparities.

The percentage of Year 1 pupils meeting the required standard in phonic decoding since 2011/12[1] can be found in the below table:[2]

The Department also publishes the percentage of pupils meeting the expected standard of phonic decoding by the end of Year 2.^2,[3]

The Department recognises that more work needs to be done to tackle regional variations in phonics screening check results. To this end, a new national network of 32 English hubs has been announced, with £26.3 million invested to improve educational outcomes for the most disadvantaged children, particularly in underperforming schools.

Due to the success of previous phonics roadshows which help schools use systematic synthetic phonics to support reading development, the Department has invested in a further 24 phonics roadshows in 2018-19. These will take place in local authority areas where phonics screening check scores in 2018 were below the national average.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/phonics-screening-check-and-key-stage-1-assessments-england-2018. Table ‘L1’ (for year 1 pupils) and Table ‘L6’ (for year 2 pupils) in the ‘National, local authority and regional tables: national curriculum assessments in phonics screening checks in England, 2018’.

[2] Figures for 2018 are based on provisional data, data for all other years is based on final data.

[3] For 2013-2016 open the ‘phonics table’ and use ‘table 9’ at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/phonics-screening-check-and-key-stage-1-assessments-england-2016. For 2016/17 open the ‘phonics table’ and use ‘table_9’ at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/phonics-screening-check-and-key-stage-1-assessments-england-2017.