Wales reading crisis: Welsh government makes another U-turn on teaching methods

ITV News' Wales Reporter Rhys Williams has the latest on the Welsh Government's stance on methods to teach reading

The Welsh government continues to change its position on how to teach English reading.

Last month, an ITV News investigation revealed that a method which has been discredited for decades is being widely used in schools across Wales.

In this approach, commonly referred to as “cueing”, young children are told to use “cues” like pictures or the context of a sentence if they are stuck on an unfamiliar word.

This technique is based on a flawed theory of how we learn to read, and was discredited by scientists decades ago.

On Wednesday, the Welsh Conservatives forced a debate in the Senedd based on ITV News’ investigation.

In their initial response to our report, the Welsh government said that it did not advocate any one specific method to teach reading.

The following week, the Welsh government admitted that guidance for schools needed to be clarified. A spokeswoman also told ITV News that “cueing” should not be used to tackle unfamiliar words.

This week however, in an interview with ITV News, the Cabinet Secretary for Education Lynne Neagle performed another U-turn, with the official government response now having changed three times in three weeks.

Ms Neagle said that cueing could be used to teach reading, with phonics as the “building blocks.”

Phonics teaching involves learning how letters connect to sounds. But as we reported last month, reading scientists say that using cues to read words can undermine phonics instruction, as children are distracted from the letters and encouraged to guess - a technique that fails in the long term.

When asked several times on Tuesday, whether very young children should be taught to decode words this way, the Cabinet Secretary for Education insisted that some teachers may decide to use cues as part of a “balanced approach to teach reading”.

“I think the teachers should be using phonics as the key building blocks, but within a balanced system," Ms Neagle said.

“That means that there are other things that teachers can use to support children with their reading, children who maybe haven't got good speech and language, children whose first language isn't even English.

“There will be some learners, they won't be ready for phonics yet, and I think it is important that our teachers, as professionals, are able to help learners based on those learners needs.”

But scientists are concerned that using cueing methods with children whose English skills are already behind when they start school only makes things worse.

Professor Kathy Rastle, a cognitive psychologist and leading reading expert, said: “It’s important to point out that while ‘balance’ is often a good thing in life, that word is typically used in reading to refer to discredited Balanced Literacy approaches, in which children are taught to guess words from different ‘cues’ such as context, the first letter, or pictures."

Professor Rastle is concerned that interventions with struggling learners based on using picture or context cues will undermine any phonics instruction they are receiving.

“Some children do struggle to learn to read but the appropriate intervention is generally more rather than less phonics," she said.

"There is certainly no evidence that these children should be engaged in discredited approaches based on the use of ‘cues’ for reading."

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“Ultimately, these types of interventions do not give children the core skills that they need to become successful readers,” she added.

Reading scientists agree that if children are encouraged to guess words based on pictures or the context of a sentence, they are being taught the habits of poor readers.

This might seem to work for a while, but when the pictures are taken away and the words get longer, the method breaks down.

Reading requires knowing how to read the words on the page (decoding) as well as knowing what they mean (comprehension).

Methods that follow the evidence involve developing both, but if children are unable to decode them, then it is impossible to develop their comprehension.

Some secondary schools in Wales say more children than ever are arriving at school in year seven unable to even decode words.

“What we’re finding more recently is we’re getting cohorts of pupils that are very low in reading ages,” said Jessica Nelms, deputy head of English and Literacy at Willows High School in Cardiff.

“Reading ages should marry up with their chronological ages, but instead of being around 11 plus we’re finding some as low as 5 or 6.”

Mrs Nelms told ITV News this is having a serious impact on every subject at the school, which is in one of Wales’ most disadvantaged communities.

“It just means that we’re continually playing catchup," she said.

"Where in an ideal world people would be arriving at secondary school able to decode and maybe comprehend some texts, we’re finding we’re actually having to go back again and go over some of that.”

The Welsh government has promoted cueing programmes to primary schools for years.

The government’s official list of recommended literacy interventions for struggling readers from 2012 until last year included several programmes, which explicitly used the cueing method. Not a single phonics programme was recommended.

The Welsh government says this was a document associated with its old national curriculum rather than its new curriculum for Wales, but it was live on its online education portal for teachers as recently as Autumn 2023.

At no point has the government notified schools that it has withdrawn its support for these programmes.

We have found that schools in at least 17 of Wales’ 22 local authority areas are still using some of these interventions, and a recent study by Bangor University also found that at least one was still in use in Welsh primary schools.

Schools in Wales are also using other reading interventions based on the cueing theory.

One programme tells teachers to ensure children “access all cues available: including illustrations and text around the difficult words to provide sense and structure".

Cardiff Council held a training course in this intervention programme in a school last week and has more planned in future.

Struggling children lucky enough to have parents who can afford private reading lessons are turning to tutors like Heather Penney in Eryri.

Ms Penney says she now uses an evidence-based method called Systematic Synthetic Phonics to teach reading.

“I’m totally shocked that people in charge of a curriculum would be advocating cueing because it was debunked decades ago," she said.

"The research out there about cueing out there is clear. It's astounding. It’s very worrying because it’s really difficult to teach somebody to not guess a word once they’ve got in the habit of guessing.”

Ms Penney says she is increasingly being contacted by parents who believe their child has dyslexia, but she believes many have simply been confused by being told to use “cues”, leaving them unable to decode words.

Ms Penney does not blame teachers. She told me that that she used to work one-to-one with struggling readers in schools in northwest Wales, and now realises she and her colleagues were using methods that were, at best, ineffective.

“It makes me feel absolutely terrible,” she said.

“It’s awful thinking I could have spent that time teaching somebody to read whereas I spent time, time-filling.”

“It’s awful looking back at what I was doing because I hadn’t been taught until that point, and until you’re taught you don’t know any better so you do the best you can,” she told ITV News.

Cabinet Secretary for Education Lynne Neagle said she acknowledged schools “would benefit from more guidance” and that the government will be issuing further guidance and resources by January.

“I said back in July that we needed a stronger approach to literacy. That's why we're reviewing the literacy and numeracy framework, and we're putting that on a statutory footing.”

Watch Rhys Williams' full interview with Cabinet Secretary for Education Lynne Neagle

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