Phonics Reform England (PRE) calls for six connected reforms, so that all children are self-teaching at age 6.
 

First, early screening for speech sound processing and dyslexia risk pre-phonics.
Children who find it difficult to process speech sounds can often be identified before phonics instruction begins. Early screening allows support to be provided before reading failure occurs, rather than waiting until difficulties appear in school.

We will show why we use Phonemies as speech sound symbols used instead of IPA phonetic symbols, allowing non-speaking children to demonstrate the sounds they hear in words. Phonemies (Speech Sound Monsters) help children see the sound value connected to graphemes in words. They can change the Phonemies if they use different sounds because of their accent. To our knowledge, no-one else has developed a system that provides accessible phoneme symbols for this purpose. 

When the underlying speech sound processing difficulties are identified and addressed early, children are far more able to benefit from phonics instruction, preventing the dyslexia paradox.
 

Second phonics teachers who understand the self-teaching brain
Second, phonics teachers who understand the self-teaching brain and are mapping words outside of phonics programme content.

Teachers and tutors need to understand that the purpose of phonics is to kick-start self-teaching, because phonics programmes explicitly teach only around 100 of the 300+ grapheme–phoneme correspondences used in reading and spelling. Most reading is acquired through implicit learning for children who do not struggle. The children who struggle do not start self-teaching.
 

Although the DfE expects teachers to support children in identifying phonemes and graphemes for all words, no-one has explored whether they do, or how they do it. Teachers must make decisions about how to segment speech and assign graphemes, yet there does not appear to be a shared reference point provided by the DfE. Research suggests that this knowledge of how to map words cannot be assumed.

If teachers do not feel confident that they are able to map words in a way that is expected, and cannot seek guidance when they are unsure, they cannot effectively support children beyond phonics lessons or outside the correspondences that have been explicitly taught.

When teachers understand this, they see why reaching the self-teaching phase early is essential, particularly in an opaque orthography like English, and why so many are perhaps missing this if phonics programmes are not adapted and improved.

They will see the value in preparing all children for this from the start, for example by showing graphemes, giving a connected sound and word, and setting up the idea that the sound a grapheme represents can be different, and that sounds can be represented in different ways.

They understand that most learning to read, for children who do not struggle, happens from speech to print, that these children are recoding and applying Set for Variability (SfV) early, and navigating the impact of accent on pronunciation.

Third, phonics instruction that is self-paced.
Children develop phonemic awareness and speech sound processing skills at different rates. Phonics instruction should allow learners to consolidate speech sound knowledge before progressing through new correspondences rather than assuming all children will move through the same sequence at the same speed. Self-paced learning ensures that children understand how speech sounds connect to print before new material is introduced. 

Fourth, explicit bidirectional phoneme–grapheme mapping.
Children need to understand how speech connects to print in both directions: reading (print to speech) and spelling (speech to print). When these mappings are clear, phonics becomes a stepping stone to the self-teaching phase of reading. Learners begin recognising patterns across words and using statistical learning to expand their knowledge of the writing system. We argue that an initial short ‘Phase 1’ pre-phonics stage, for example the Ten Day Speech Sound Play Plan is useful for all children and essential for those at risk. Introducing speech sounds first makes learning phonics easier for everyone. 
The DfE has previously suggested that SSP programme developers remove a focus on sounds before phonics during the validation process.

Fifth, universal access to technology that makes the whole code visible.
Every learner should have access to tools that clearly show which letters form graphemes and what sound value they represent. The Department for Education expects teachers to support children in identifying grapheme–phoneme correspondences, during reading and spelling activities throughout the day, but in practice this can be difficult to provide consistently across classrooms. Word Mapping Technology can make these relationships explicit so children can explore how speech and print connect independently. MyWordz® is currently being considered for the Department for Education’s EdTech Impact Testbed, which evaluates education technologies that can improve learning outcomes in real classroom settings.

Sixth, earlier exposure to engaging decodable levelled readers where the code is visible.
Children in England could begin reading decodable levelled readers from the second term of Reception, after exposure to word mapping with graphemes that allow them to decode and encode many words and understand key concepts, such as that graphemes can represent different sounds (c as in cat, c as in cent), that graphemes can have more than one letter (hill, hiss), and that graphemes can consist of two different letters, for example ck together still representing the /k/ sound. Most children in England do this by covering s a t p i n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f l ll ss in Term 1.

At the same time,from term 1, they continue learning the remaining Core Code GPCs explicitly until they have mastered the roughly 100 tested in the PSC. 
These particular decodable levelled readers allow them to be exposed to the wider code of 200+, including high-frequency words, within meaningful stories. In these books the text is coded to show which letters form graphemes and what sound value they represent. This reduces cognitive load and allows children to see how speech and print connect for correspondences not yet taught in phonics.

Because the code is visible, children can develop important reading behaviours such as recoding and set for variability rather than simply trying to labour through every word with limited knowledge of the code. The books are initially predictable and repetitive, helping children anticipate patterns while building confidence. At the same time they are written to engage young readers, because they were created by an acclaimed children’s author who understood how children become readers, not simply children who can decode.

A Preventable Problem

The reading and spelling difficulties many children experience in England are not inevitable.
 

They are often the result of a system that identifies problems too late and responds with interventions rather than prevention.

With earlier screening, better understanding of speech sound processing, and phonics instruction that adapts to the child rather than the programme, many of these difficulties could be avoided.

That is why Phonics Reform England exists.
 

Because this is not reading reform. This is phonics reform.
 

The goal is not simply passing a phonics test. The goal is ensuring that every child has the opportunity to become a fluent, confident reader by securing the phoneme–grapheme mapping that enables fluency and comprehension to take place.

This reform centres on phonemic awareness and phonics. Phonics is only one part of learning to read, but by making this part work for all children, we remove one of the biggest barriers to reading success.