The Year One Phonics Screening Check

What is the Year One Phonics Screener Check?

The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check is a statutory assessment used in England each June to gauge how well children can decode simple words. Each pupil reads 40 items, half real words and half pseudo words, while a teacher records whether the child can pronounce them correctly.

The marking criteria uses the IPA phonetic symbols to denote the 'acceptable pronunciations' for the pseudo words.   
 

Although presented as a measure of early reading skill, the check covers only about 90 grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) out of the 350 plus known to skilled readers. These are covered in the Speech Sound Pics (SSP) Approach Core Code - the four Code Levels seen on the SSP chants strip. It simply tests whether a child can look at a GPC, say the “expected” sound, and blend those sounds into a word. When a child struggles, the test does not reveal the reason. It cannot tell whether the difficulty lies in recalling the phoneme, blending the sounds, or something else entirely. It also offers no information about a child’s ability to encode (spell from sounds) or about phonological working memory. These are risk factors for dyslexia. 
 

Furthermore, children with strong orthographic knowledge, such as those learning with the Speech Sound Pics approach, must be told to use only the “core code” when reading the pseudo words. Otherwise they may give several plausible pronunciations, which is actually a sign of advanced word knowledge but is not allowed within the assessment.
 

Because of these limits, the Phonics Screening Check provides little diagnostic value for identifying dyslexia or for guiding targeted support. It is both too narrow and too late to give teachers the insight they need. 
 

Children using the SSP Approach are checked once they have completed the four Code Levels, and their results are added to their records. For some this occurs in Reception term one, most are ready before the end of Reception, while others who need more time (around 10%) might not be ready until the middle of Year 1. Children are not expected to be learning the core code at the end of Year 1 unless there is a significant intellectual impairment. SSP teachers also uses our own Assessment Tool to check letter formation, decoding fluency, and comprehension at each Code Level.