A growing body of research is beginning to question the impact of highly standardised curricula and commercial programmes on teacher autonomy, professional judgement and responsiveness to learner needs. Phonics Reform England (PRE) explores the impact of one-size-fits-all phonics programmes not only on children, but also on the teachers expected to deliver them with fidelity despite clear differences in learner profiles, rates of orthographic learning and instructional need.
 

The National Education Union report Are You on Slide 8 Yet? (2025) examined the impact of increasingly standardised curricular models on teachers and professional practice. The report defines standardised curricula as “units/schemes of work, programmes or packages that are ready for teachers to follow in teaching” and notes that in some contexts “teachers are expected to adhere very closely to the standardised curriculum design”, including through scripted approaches.

Importantly, the report found that “teachers who did not use standardised curricula reported significantly higher levels of autonomy than those who did use standardised curricula” and that “teachers of non-standardised curricula reported higher levels of self-efficacy in relation to both instructional and engagement self-efficacy.”

The report therefore raises broader concerns about what happens when professional judgement becomes increasingly shaped by externally prescribed pacing, sequencing and programme fidelity. This is particularly significant in literacy education because reading and spelling development are not uniform processes. Children do not all move through orthographic learning in the same way, at the same pace, or with the same instructional needs. Responsive teaching requires teachers to notice where breakdowns occur and respond flexibly, particularly when supporting speech-to-print mapping while spelling and print-to-speech processing while reading.

Researchers at University College London and Liverpool John Moores University have also questioned whether England’s increasingly narrow synthetic phonics policy environment is adequately meeting the needs of all children, particularly those who struggle to read. Writing about their findings, the researchers argued that “England’s phonics orthodoxy is too inflexible to get the best outcomes for children with reading difficulties” and stated: “We cannot persist with a one-size-fits-all approach that we know doesn’t work for all children.”

Their analysis also suggested that policy expectations may directly shape teacher decision-making. The study reported that “21% of teachers surveyed for the research persist with the synthetic phonics approach, even when it does not work for the children they teach, because this is what Department for Education require.”

Together, these sources raise important professional questions about the relationship between programme fidelity and teacher expertise.

What happens when teachers are trained primarily to follow commercial programmes rather than to understand orthographic learning, self-teaching and the complexity of English spelling itself?

What happens when fidelity becomes prioritised over responsiveness?
 

Research into orthographic mapping and self-teaching suggests that children build orthographic knowledge through successful encounters with words during authentic reading and writing experiences. Some children require highly explicit support to make the code visible. Others rapidly infer correspondences and move into the self-teaching phase with far less direct instruction.

This creates a significant challenge for highly standardised programmes. Restrictive pacing, tightly controlled texts and fixed progression routes may support some learners, while simultaneously constraining others or failing to respond when children are not progressing as expected.

The issue is not whether phonics instruction has value. The issue is whether one-size-fits-all commercial programmes can adequately support the full range of learners in real classrooms, while also allowing teachers to exercise professional judgement.

The research therefore raises concerns not only about the impact of one-size-fits-all programmes on children, but also about their impact on the teaching profession itself. If teachers are expected to follow programmes with fidelity regardless of learner variation, there is a risk that professional knowledge and responsive decision-making become secondary to procedural compliance.

Sources

National Education Union (2025). Are You on Slide 8 Yet?
https://neu.org.uk/latest/library/are-you-slide-8-yet

University College London Institute of Education (2025). Narrow synthetic phonics is not effective for teaching struggling young readers
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/dec/narrow-synthetic-phonics-not-effective-teaching-struggling-young-readers

Liverpool John Moores University (2025). Phonics approach not effective for all children
https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/news/articles/2025