An educationalist from the Western Isles is urging the Scottish Government to introduce a modern technique to improve how children learn to read.
Anne Glennie from Lewis says it is “deeply shocking” that teachers in training are still being shown old fashioned methods.
Ms Glennie -
Scotland’s rank went from 6th in 2000 to 23rd in 2015 in reading, and is now behind both England and Northern Ireland.
She urges the government to include the Systematic Synthetic Phonics system as a choice in the curriculum.
The method teaches infants to blend the sound of individual letters to pronounce unfamiliar words.
An internationally renowned study -
Ms Glennie said: “It is a surprising, and deeply shocking, fact that many teachers,
working in primary or secondary schools in Scotland today, have had no formal input
or training on “how to teach children to read,” either as part of their degree, post-
She added: “Systematic synthetic phonics works, for everyone, but especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“If we are serious about closing the attainment gap, we cannot afford to ignore this any longer.
“When it comes to the teaching of beginning readers, we’re still doing what we did in the 70s – and it’s not working. Reading research has moved on; Scotland has not.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said raising standards was the government’s top priority with it making a “significant investment” to close the literacy gap.
She added: “While teaching phonetics is clearly an important part of learning to read, systematic synthetic phonics is only one of a range of approaches.
“We have empowered teachers to use the most appropriate approach to meet the needs of individual children, based on the best available evidence.”
Island educationalist urges Scotland to update the way reading is taught in school
9 Nov 2017
Anne Glennie gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament