Sound it out: Victorian children improve reading ‘leaps and bounds’ thanks to phonics

Phonics teaches children to read by helping them to identify the connection between phonemes (sounds) and letters (graphemes) by sounding them out. Photograph: Stuart Boulton/Alamy

At Spring Parks primary school, there’s usually a steady proportion of prep students who lag far behind their peers in reading comprehension. But this year, every student has scored more than 80% in their tests.

The answer, its principal Philip O’Reilly says, is phonics.