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At the launch of the final
report of the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy,
8 December, Dr Brendan Nelson, the Australian Government
Minister for Education, stated, "We need to start now on
a journey of making sure that every Australian understands
that parenthood involves a number of responsibilities. One of
them is actually starting to read to your children in early
life. And, on a day to day basis, let’s envisage a future
where the average parent gets up each day and thinks, well, of
all the things I’ve got to do today, one of them is read to
my child".
This advice is in stark
contrast to that of the British Minister of Education, Ruth
Kelly, who stated at the launch of the Rose Review, 1
December, "We should have a systematic approach to
teaching Synthetic Phonics, that should be taught first and
foremost to all children, certainly by the age of five and
then, yes, other strategies should come in after that to help
and support those readers for whom a variety of methods is
appropriate."
British Phonics expert Alan
Davies believes that Ruth Kelly is wrong to believe that
synthetic phonics is the ‘best route to becoming skilled
readers’. He believes that she has been misguided and has
probably made the "Biggest faux pas, by a Minister of
Education, in British Educational history." He believes,
as stated on Sky News, 1 December, "The best thing they
[parents] can do, if they want to teach their child to be
literate in English, is to put a three-year-old child on their
knee and turn over the pages of a favourite book to anticipate
the story and the pictures".
Commenting on Brendan Nelson’s
statement, Davies said, "Ruth Kelly’s equivalent advice
would be, ‘Let’s envisage a future where the average
parent gets up each day and thinks, well, of all the things I’ve
got to do today, one of them is to find out if my child is an
expert in Synthetic Phonics before we can turn over the pages
of a favourite book."
Davies is the pioneer of the
widely used phonics programme THRASS (Teaching Handwriting
Reading And Spelling Skills), which is used in many schools in
the UK, but more extensively in Australia and, over the last
two years, Southern Africa. The Botswana Government are to
implement THRASS in all primary and secondary schools and the
THRASS two-day training course is a compulsory module for
trainee teachers at the University of Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, and a growing number of other universities in
South Africa.
Davies is the author of an
accredited ‘Phonics Certificate for Parents’, first staged
at Oxley Park Primary School, Milton Keynes, England,
September 2005. Two videos of the training course, attended by
fifty parents, can be viewed and/or freely downloaded from the
website www.phonics4parents.co.uk
The second video focuses on
the THRASS PHONEME MACHINE software, which uses the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciation system and
moving human lips, to help parents better understand the
building blocks of the English Language, the 44 sounds and 120
key spelling-choices.
THRASS UK News Media Centre
www.thrass.co.uk/nm.htm
Further
information:
UK:
Mike Meade, Media Director, THRASS UK 01829 741413 Mob: 07970
151 738 mikemeade@thrass.co.uk
INTERNATIONAL:
Chris Griffiths, International Development, THRASS UK +30 266
203 1207 chrisgriffiths@thrass.co.uk
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