Key themes emerging from teachers following the 2026 Phonics Screening Check

1. Children confused real words with pseudowords

Many teachers reported that children treated unfamiliar real words as if they were alien words, while others assumed pseudowords were real.

"I had one read orbits correctly and then say... 'Is that a real word?' As they hadn't come across that word before and didn't know what it means."

Children who had never encountered words such as chess or eaten sometimes failed to apply set for variability because they assumed the decoded pronunciation was correct for an alien word. Others went the opposite way, changing an unfamiliar real word into one they already knew.

Examples included:

• chess → cheese

• eaten decoded literally with <e> as in kept and not adjusted to the known word

• smoother read without reducing the final -er to a schwa because the child did not know the word

This suggests vocabulary knowledge and word recognition influenced performance, even though the PSC is intended to assess straightforward grapheme recognition and blending.

2. Vocabulary knowledge influenced decoding

Teachers repeatedly highlighted that whether a child recognised a word often determined whether they successfully identified it.

"Mine actually found the real words harder this year."

"When several of my class read chess as cheese... they used their phonics skills to decode admirably and it was their reading skills that let them down."

Rather than measuring only decoding, many teachers felt the test increasingly depended on whether children already knew the word they had decoded.

3. Multiple plausible pronunciations created uncertainty

Several pseudowords generated extensive debate, even among experienced teachers.

"We had very similar discussions on qued. Four professionals sat in a room discussing whether we would accept a made-up word."

Teachers questioned whether children should be penalised when several pronunciations could reasonably be justified from their knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences.

Examples included:

• qued being read as queued, particularly where children recognised <ed> as a suffix from words such as barbequed

• crort often becoming court because <or> is far more common than <ort>

• splace, where teachers accepted at least three different pronunciations depending on which orthographic patterns children applied

"I think all three should be given."

4. The PSC increasingly depends on orthographic knowledge beyond basic GPCs

Teachers questioned whether some items required knowledge that goes beyond straightforward grapheme recognition and blending.

One example was splace.

Some children treated <c> as /k/.

Others treated <ce> as /s/.

Others followed the pronunciation expected in the mark scheme because of patterns found in words such as lace and race.

As one teacher noted, children are effectively expected to know orthographic conventions that are not explicitly taught as part of basic phonics instruction.

5. Accent and dialect continue to affect outcomes

Teachers reported several examples where pronunciation depended on regional accent.

Examples included:

• foot pronounced to rhyme with boot

• craft pronounced with either /a/ or /ar/

One teacher wrote:

"My better readers sounded it with an a and then reread it with the ar sound, but my poorer ones didn't... I couldn't give it because we're down south."

Another teacher reported children failing on craft, believing they simply did not know the word rather than recognising it as an accent difference.

6. Prior teaching sometimes conflicted with the expected answer

Teachers highlighted occasions where children applied previously taught spelling knowledge appropriately but were marked incorrect.

One example was meve.

"Many of my children, having learned that v can't be on the end of a word by itself without e, had said it was m/e/v because of that rule... It shouldn't be a ve ending for assessing split digraph knowledge."

Rather than demonstrating weak phonics, children were applying spelling conventions they had already been taught.

7. Pseudowords can create unnecessary confusion

Teachers questioned whether nonsense words continue to serve a useful purpose.

One teacher even reported:

"One of the alien words was the name of a child in the class! Did not make for a smooth test."

Another commented:

"Alien words allow alternative spelling sounds... I also am not sure what the phonics screening check achieves... it doesn't really tell us anything different than what we already know about our kiddos."

Several teachers questioned whether the PSC provides information beyond schools' own ongoing phonics assessments.

8. Reading isolated words does not reflect real reading

Many teachers argued that reading should be assessed in context rather than through isolated words.

"I agree that the test should be based on reading words in context rather than in isolation."

They pointed out that context allows children to apply meaning and self-correct through set for variability, which is a hallmark of successful reading.

9. Many teachers called for wider reform rather than small adjustments

Perhaps the strongest theme was that teachers were not simply asking for a lower pass mark.

They questioned whether the current format measures the skills it claims to assess.

One teacher summed up the feeling shared by many:

"I also think the nonsense or 'alien' words should be scrapped altogether. I can't see the educational benefit of expecting five- and six-year-old children to read words that have no meaning."

"I've seen children who can read fluently and comprehend texts with ease, yet they come close to failing because they're asked to read isolated words that don't appear in meaningful sentences."

"In my opinion, the entire Phonics Screening Check needs a complete overhaul—not just a lower pass mark."
 

10. Teachers questioned whether passing the PSC reflects successful reading

Several teachers argued that a good PSC score does not necessarily indicate that a child has moved beyond slow, effortful decoding to fluent reading with understanding.

"Passing still doesn't mean a child can 'read'. It just means they can 'decode' a word... chances are some who have passed will still be decoding every single word in their reading book and not actually reading with any understanding of what is actually happening in the text."

Others questioned why the pass mark had been lowered while the format of the assessment remained unchanged.

"Seems like quite an 'easy' test too, yet they've lowered the pass to 31!"

Taken together, these comments suggest many teachers see the PSC as measuring one aspect of early reading, but not whether children have become fluent readers who recognise words automatically and read for meaning.