There has been much talk recently about how successful various approaches to the teaching of reading are. At Sounds-Write, we encourage schools using our programme to give their pupils a spelling test. The reason for this is that spelling is highly likely to give a much more accurate picture of a pupil’s literacy than merely reading. Why? Because in reading tests it’s much easier to guess and that is especially true on tests in which the target word is contextualised within a sentence. Spelling is harder because to spell, a pupil must retrieve the spellings from memory, a much harder task than reading, which relies on recognition memory.
Here are this year’s results from St George’s CEPS and you may remember that St George’s children have achieved a 100% success rate in the Phonics Screening Check for the past six years.
St George’s school is located within one of the poorest catchment areas in South London. It has a very high number of children on free school meals and many children at the school speak a language other than English at home.
Looking at the table, which I have anonymised, you can see that 28 children in Year 1 (their second year of schooling) sat the Young’s Parallel Spelling Test in June 2018. The average age of the children was 6.3 years; their average spelling age was 8.6 years; and, they were then, on average, 28 months ahead. No child scored below their chronological age. In fact, no child scored below 13 months ahead of their chronological age. At the other end, four children scored at more than 40 months ahead of chronological age.
| Name | Male/
Female |
Age as decimal | Spelling Age
June 2018 decimal |
| 1 | F | 5.8 | 9.3 |
| 2 | M | 6.6 | 8.8 |
| 3 | M | 6.8 | 9.1 |
| 4 | F | 5.8 | 8.5 |
| 5 | M | 6.8 | 8.2 |
| 6 | F | 6.8 | 8.2 |
| 7 | F | 6.0 | 8.6 |
| 8 | M | 6.0 | 8.5 |
| 9 | M | 6.0 | 8.5 |
| 10 | M | 6.3 | 7.4 |
| 11 | M | 6.4 | >11.0 |
| 12 | M | 6.4 | 8.2 |
| 13 | M | 6.6 | 9.0 |
| 14 | M | 6.7 | 8.2 |
| 15 | F | 6.3 | 8.8 |
| 16 | M | 6.8 | 8.0 |
| 17 | M | 6.4 | 7.8 |
| 18 | M | 6.3 | 9.7 |
| 19 | F | 5.8 | 8.1 |
| 20 | M | 6.0 | 7.8 |
| 21 | F | 6.3 | 9.9 |
| 22 | M | 5.9 | 8.2 |
| 23 | M | 6.4 | 9.5 |
| 24 | F | 6.7 | 8.5 |
| 25 | F | 6.0 | 9.1 |
| 26 | F | 6.0 | 8.0 |
| 27 | M | 6.3 | 8.0 |
| 28 | F | 6.0 | 9.0 |
This is what can be done with a programme that works for a whole class and that teachers teach with fidelity. There’s nothing more to say really, is there, except to congratulate both staff and pupils on achieving such outstanding results.