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Phonics Reform England: Not reading reform. Phonics reform. Improving phonics for the one in five at risk of struggling to read and spell.
As concerns grow about one-size-fits-all phonics policy and programme fidelity, increasing attention is also being drawn to who is shaping England’s reading agenda. This section explores the relationship between government policy, English Hubs and the commercial SSP sector, raising questions about transparency, conflicts of interest and the influence of programme developers on what counts as “good” reading instruction in England.
It depends on whether it's a DfE validated SSP programme.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/access-support-from-school-hubs/subject-hubs#english-hubs
When the same individuals and organisations who profit from selling SSP programmes to schools are also involved in shaping government policy, advising English Hubs and influencing the systems through which schools access funding and approval, serious questions about independence and conflicts of interest inevitably arise. Schools are effectively required to purchase DfE-validated SSP programmes to access support through the English Hubs initiative, yet many of the voices shaping that policy environment have direct or indirect links to the commercial products benefiting from it. In any other sector, this level of overlap between policy influence and commercial gain would attract intense scrutiny.
Who are the “experts” shaping England’s reading policy?
The Department for Education’s Reading Framework states that the document “has been developed through the contributions of experts from across the literacy sector and of school leaders” and that it is based on “the valued experience and knowledge of teachers, reading and language experts, educational organisations, English hubs council members, and our 34 English hubs.”
But this raises an important question.
Who are these “experts”, and whose interests are being represented when government literacy policy is developed?
Teachers across England have spent years being expected to follow commercial SSP programmes with fidelity, often under intense accountability pressures linked to government policy, English Hubs guidance and Ofsted expectations. Yet increasing attention is now being drawn to the relationship between government policy formation and the commercial phonics sector itself.
Education Uncovered revealed that teachers and consultants linked to Read Write Inc. (RWI) or Little Wandle constituted 17 of the 23 members who had served on the DfE’s English Hubs Council since 2019. The council advises the government on matters including schools’ phonics provision. The article notes that both Dame Ruth Miskin, founder of Read Write Inc., and the co-founders of Little Wandle were represented on the council from its inception, despite more than 40 phonics programmes having DfE validation.
This matters because these are not simply educational approaches. They are commercial products operating within a substantial market shaped directly by government policy.
Education Uncovered also reported that Read Write Inc. and Little Wandle “have made nearly £20 million in profit in total for the organisations running them over the four years to 2023.”
At the same time, Dame Ruth Miskin has played an influential role within government literacy policy while also benefiting commercially from the expansion of SSP policy structures. Education Uncovered reported that the value of her phonics company climbed to £19 million while synthetic phonics policy became increasingly embedded within England’s education system.
This raises legitimate questions about conflicts of interest within policy development.
When the same individuals and organisations who profit from selling SSP programmes to schools are also involved in shaping government policy, advising English Hubs and influencing the systems through which schools access funding and approval, serious questions about independence and conflicts of interest inevitably arise. Schools are effectively required to purchase DfE-validated SSP programmes to access support through the English Hubs initiative, yet many of the voices shaping that policy environment have direct or indirect links to the commercial products benefiting from it. In any other sector, this level of overlap between policy influence and commercial gain would attract intense scrutiny.
The concern is not that individuals with classroom expertise contribute to policy. The concern is whether commercial programme developers and those closely linked to particular products have exercised disproportionate influence over what counts as acceptable reading instruction in England.
The Department for Education has stated that it “takes conflicts of interest seriously” and maintains a conflicts register for English Hubs Council members. However, critics argue that the system lacks transparency and that the relationship between policy, programme validation, English Hubs and commercial interests has not been subjected to sufficient public scrutiny.
We argue that the project has been lacking in transparency and accountability. Despite presenting as a national outreach project, much of the work and decision-making structure remains opaque to the wider profession.
These concerns become particularly significant when viewed alongside emerging research questioning highly standardised literacy instruction and programme fidelity.
If teachers are increasingly expected to follow government-approved commercial programmes with fidelity, while those same programmes or closely connected organisations are heavily represented within advisory structures shaping policy, then important questions about independence, transparency and professional autonomy inevitably emerge.
The issue is not whether phonics instruction matters. The issue is who gets to define what “good” phonics teaching looks like, whose commercial interests may benefit from those definitions, and whether teachers themselves are being reduced from informed professionals to deliverers of government-endorsed products.
Sources
Department for Education. The Reading Framework: Teaching the foundations of literacy
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-reading-framework-teaching-the-foundations-of-literacy
Education Uncovered. Former headteacher and DfE adviser Ruth Miskin sees her phonics company’s value climb to £19 million
https://educationuncovered.co.uk/news/former-headteacher-and-dfe-adviser-ruth-miskin-sees-her-phonics-companys-value-climb-to-19-million
Why genuine literacy expertise would not support a one-size-fits-all approach
A genuine expert in reading development would understand that orthographic learning is not uniform. Children do not all move through speech-to-print mapping, print-to-speech processing, phoneme awareness, vocabulary development and self-teaching at the same pace or in the same way. Some children infer grapheme–phoneme correspondences rapidly and begin independently building orthographic knowledge through wide reading and writing experiences. Others require highly explicit support to make the code visible and accessible.
For this reason alone, a genuinely evidence-informed literacy expert would not support a rigid one-size-fits-all instructional model applied uniformly across all learners.
Reading science does not support the idea that all children should move through the same programme at the same pace, using the same texts, the same progression routes and the same instructional responses regardless of learner variation. The research literature repeatedly demonstrates substantial variability in how children acquire orthographic knowledge, respond to explicit instruction and move into the self-teaching phase.
An expert in literacy development would therefore be expected to prioritise teacher knowledge and responsiveness over programme fidelity.
This is particularly important because orthographic learning occurs during authentic acts of reading and writing. Teachers need to be able to respond flexibly when children cannot map a word from speech-to-print while spelling, or from print-to-speech while reading. They need to understand how to support the cognitive processes involved in orthographic mapping itself, not simply how to follow a commercial sequence.
Highly standardised SSP programmes may provide useful structure for some schools and learners. However, when programme fidelity becomes prioritised over professional judgement, there is a risk that teachers become implementers of commercial systems rather than responsive professionals able to adapt instruction to learner need.
The concern is therefore not phonics instruction itself. The concern is the growing assumption within policy and commercial training structures that a single validated programme, progression route or instructional model can adequately meet the needs of all children.
This is why Phonics Reform England (PRE) is led by genuine literacy experts, including researchers, teachers and specialists who recognise the complexity of orthographic learning and the importance of responsive instruction.
For more than ten years, Emma Hartnell-Baker supported schools in Australia using a word mapping approach that rejected rigid whole-class phonics progression while still ensuring coverage and ongoing assessment of the core code seen in synthetic phonics programmes, using four code levels. Children moved through orthographic learning at their own pace, while teachers supported bidirectional mapping throughout the school day during authentic reading and writing experiences. The goal was to actually apply word mapping in meaningful context.
One of the greatest challenges was not the children. It was the expectation from some school leaders that literacy instruction should come with a handbook, scripted lessons and a progression route that could be planned a year in advance and followed by any relief teacher regardless of learner variation. On completion of her doctorate, which investigates how teachers make decisions around mapping words with correspondences that fall outside of the core code, Emma Hartnell-Baker will resume supporting teachers in Australia.
Teachers contact her daily expressing their frustration with the push for commercial programmes to be used there, and being told that they “offer sufficient support for every child to become a fluent reader”, as is claimed by the DfE. Teachers know that this does not add up, especially when data from England is taken into account.
PRE does not advocate for abandoning phonics instruction. We know how it can work for all in a classroom setting as we have seen it. It advocates for moving beyond rigid one-size-fits-all programme fidelity towards evidence-informed approaches that recognise learner variability, teacher expertise and the cognitive complexity of reading and spelling development.
A genuine literacy expert would recognise that children differ, orthographic learning differs, and therefore teaching must also differ.
The English Hubs programme states that it supports schools in early reading “with a particular focus on systematic synthetic phonics, early language and reading for pleasure.”
However, this claim sits uneasily alongside national data showing that levels of reading for pleasure among children are now at their lowest levels since the introduction and expansion of mandated SSP policy in England. This does not prove causation, but it raises important questions about whether highly standardised phonics-led approaches, tightly controlled reading schemes and restricted text experiences may be limiting some children’s engagement with authentic reading.
If reading for pleasure is genuinely a priority, then policymakers must be willing to examine whether current policy structures are fully aligned with that goal, and whether those they claim are experts understand the fundamentals of supporting reading for pleasure.
We would expect genuine literacy experts to play devil’s advocate and consider why so few children are now choosing to read for pleasure. This pattern is not seen to the same extent in comparable countries, so it cannot simply be attributed to broader international trends alone.