The dominance of synthetic phonics in reading policy in England

Abstract

While the Science of Reading (SoR) has not been a commonly used term in the United Kingdom, many of the tropes of the ‘reading wars’ in the United States are also present in the debates in England and in other jurisdictions. Since the late 2000s, successive government policies in England have fundamentally altered what were, historically, accepted practices of teaching reading that could be described as a balanced approach. From 2008 to 2024, the Department for Education in England increasingly strengthened the idea that synthetic phonics is the only way to teach early reading and rejected arguments for a different approach, despite debate over the merits and outcomes of this policy. In this paper, we focus on the narrowing of what are regarded as accepted ways of teaching reading, drawing on analysis of policy texts as well as previously published empirical work in schools in England. We examine the network of actors, including commercial companies, implicated in producing and maintaining this orthodoxy. In conclusion, we comment on England’s course of action compared to that of other nations, which should be seen as a cautionary tale.