Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the Phonic Screening Check.

The Department for Education is evaluating the introduction of the Phonics Screening Check through a three-year externally-commissioned independent evaluation, undertaken by the National Foundation for Educational Research. The evaluation is now in the final year. The first two reports have been published and can be found online:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluation-of-the-phonics-screening-check-first-interim-report and https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/phonics-screening-check-evaluation

There are no plans to discontinue the Phonics Screening Check.

The Department piloted the Phonics Screening Check in 300 primary schools in 2011, prior to national roll-out in 2012. The evaluation report on the pilot can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/year-1-phonics-screening-check-pilot-evaluation

We have also published annual technical reports evaluating the validity and reliability of the Check. The first of these reports was based on the pilot and can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/phonics-screening-check-pilot-2011-technical-report

The technical reports since the national roll-out can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/phonics-screening-check-2012-technical-report and https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/phonics-screening-check-2013-technical-report