Pamela Snow once said I was “focusing too narrowly.”
Dr Karen Faulds suggested phonics may not foster a love of reading.
Both miss the point.
Claude Bernard put it cleanly: “It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning.”
Children do not arrive as blank slates. They arrive with prior knowledge — sometimes accurate, often flawed. If they have been taught “buh” for /b/, “duh” for /d/, or a tidy one-letter-one-sound rule that English does not obey, that prior learning blocks the new. Until the error is unlearned, broader talk about sampling, love of reading, or “phonics schemes in every school” will not move the needle.
The thorn comes first
If a runner is limping, you pull the thorn before you order blood tests. When children disengage from reading, the first place to look is the most immediate source of confusion: how consonant sounds are taught.
Sue Lloyd, author of Jolly Phonics, has said that “saying the sounds as purely as possible is important.” That is not a footnote. Teaching letters with an added schwa is the thorn that shuts down curious children. Dr Richard Selznick, after seeing thousands of struggling readers, described many of them as instructional casualties: they would not have shut down if they had been taught differently. A majority of the non-readers he saw pronounced consonants with those extra sounds.
This is not the only problem. It is the first problem. Confusion is a shutdown trigger. Children check out when input does not add up. That shutdown is protective, not laziness. Once they have checked out, motivation, vocabulary, and “love of reading” collapse with them.
The three-legged rabbit
An Indian prince caught a three-legged rabbit and declared that all rabbits have three legs. UK policy works the same way. Every school now follows a phonics scheme. Therefore, phonics must be the solution. Yet systematic synthetic phonics has been the dominant approach since around 2006, and the UK has still not broken into the top 10 in PISA reading. Functional illiteracy rates have barely moved for decades.
If the method is sound, then either implementation is still flawed — teachers adding schwa, programmes applied inconsistently — or complementary practices are neglected: rote mastery of high-frequency words, and explicit teaching that letters often represent more than one sound. Mandating a scheme is not the same as teaching without confusion.
Phonics was never meant to create a love of reading. Its job is to give children the mechanics of decoding so they can reach meaning. Love of reading follows when those mechanics are taught clearly. When they are taught in a way that contradicts what the child already “knows,” curiosity dies.
What they already know
Early input matters. Children absorb sounds and patterns from television, apps, and well-meaning adults long before formal school. If those inputs are muddled — Baby TV, letter songs with “buh,” charts that treat English like a transparent code — the muddle becomes prior knowledge. By the time the official phonics programme begins, the child is not learning afresh. They are fighting what they already believe.
The same pattern appears across languages. Children who read Malay or clean Pinyin with ease often stall in English. They have phonemic awareness. What they do not have is a clean mapping from letter to sound in a language whose letters keep changing jobs. Asking them to blend “duh-ah-guh” into dog is not a test of their brains. It is a test of whether the instruction makes sense.
Stop circling
Sampling issues in PISA 2022 do not explain two decades of flat outcomes under universal phonics schemes. “Phonics doesn’t foster a love of reading” does not explain why children shut down before they ever reach the stories. Calling the focus on pure sounds “narrow” does not pull the thorn.
The real issue is prior knowledge that blocks new learning: wrong sounds, neglected high-frequency words, and the failure to show that letters often represent multiple sounds. Until that gap in instructional clarity is closed, we will keep circling the problem instead of solving it.
Remove the thorn. Then talk about everything else.
The above is based on a Linked discussion around 4 & 5 September 2026 between Dr. Karen Faulds and me. I have copied the discussion for posterity.
Dr Karen Faulds • Educational Consultant and Specialist Assessor (APC), offering assessments for dyslexia and maths difficulties. ADHD assessments for DSA, Access to Work, exam access and workplace adjustments. Coaching programmes.
Systematic synthetic phonics teaching in the UK has focused on pure sounds for decades. Phonics programmes have their own ways to encourage pure sounds.
Luqman Michel
Great.
Then why is the % of kids leaving schools as illiterates about the same for decades?
Dr Karen Faulds
Luqman Michel it’s not because teachers add a ‘schwa’ to sounds, there are plenty of other reasons that can’t be easily fixed by synthetic phonics alone.
Luqman Michel
I know that to be true, but you are evading my question. I never said adding an “uh” sound to consonants is the only reason children shut down. In fact, I’ve identified several reasons in my book Shut Down Kids.
The point is this: schools in the UK formally adopted systematic synthetic phonics around 2006. If SSP has been the dominant approach for nearly two decades, why has the UK never broken into the top 10 in PISA?
If the method is sound, then either:
Implementation is flawed (teachers still introduce confusion, or programmes are inconsistently applied), or
Complementary practices like rote mastery of high‑frequency words and explicit teaching that letters can represent multiple sounds are being neglected.
Until we confront this disconnect between decades of phonics dominance and flat literacy outcomes, we’re just circling around the problem instead of solving it.
Please read my recent post at https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2026/09/the-thorn-we-refuse-to-pull.html
Dr Karen Faulds Could you explain why the UK is not in the top ten in reading in the 2022 PISA?
Dr Karen Faulds
There are sampling issues about the 2022 data, and the primary data is better than the secondary. I don’t think there is any evidence that calls UK phonics teaching into question, but then phonics teaching may not be the best way to foster a love of reading. I’m clearly not going to change your mind whatever I say, but you should understand that in the UK, every school uses a phonics scheme. If you find one that doesn’t, they are going against government guidance.
Luqman Michel
I take your point about sampling and the distinction between primary and secondary data. But even setting that aside, the reality is that every UK school now follows a phonics scheme, as you note. If universal adoption is in place, then the question isn’t whether phonics is being used — it’s why functional illiteracy persists despite it.
And on your point about fostering a love of reading: phonics was never meant to create that love. Its role is to provide the mechanics of decoding. Love of reading comes when those mechanics are taught clearly, without confusion, so children can access meaning and enjoy stories. When phonics is taught in ways that confuse — neglecting high‑frequency words or failing to show that letters often represent multiple sounds — children disengage. That disengagement is what kills curiosity and enjoyment.
So, the real issue isn’t whether phonics fosters love of reading, but whether phonics is taught in a way that prevents children from shutting down. Until that gap in instructional clarity and complementary practices is addressed, debating sampling won’t change the fact that outcomes remain flat.
Notes now added:
Dr. Karen Faulds is like the Indian prince who caught a three legged rabbit and declared all rabbits are three legged.
Here is the continuation of our discussion on 6th September:
Karen then asked if I am from the UK.
I replied:
No, I am not from the UK.
I have had many exchanges over the years with people and organisations in the UK (including members of the Reading Reform Foundation) about how children are taught to read. My concern is a widely broadcast UK-produced programme, Charlie and the Alphabet on BabyTV, which I believe gives many young children their first, repeated model of letter sounds. I set out the details and my correspondence in this post: https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2021/12/dr-marlynne-grant-and-reading-reform.html#more
On the letter sounds themselves:
They are not appropriate if the goal is accurate phoneme knowledge for later blending.
The programme introduces consonant sounds frequently produced with an added schwa or extra vowel: “cuh,” “buh,” “duh,” and similar distortions rather than the clipped, pure phonemes /k/, /b/, /d/. That is the same problem Sue Lloyd of the Reading Reform Foundation noted when she said the sounds in the programme “are not that great.”
Pure consonant sounds are what children need in order to blend. Extra “uh” sounds make blending much harder and, for a subset of children who are already vulnerable to shutting down, can become the first entrenched model they receive. Once that model is in place it is difficult to overwrite. That is why I have repeatedly asked for the episodes to be corrected or withdrawn rather than treated as harmless entertainment.
Dr Karen Faulds replied:
Never heard of that programme, or BabyTV. There’s a great deal of unsuitable material out there.
Here is my response:
Dr. Faulds, with respect, whether you have personally heard of BabyTV or not is beside the point. The issue isn’t your familiarity with the programme — it’s the fact that such content exists, is widely broadcast, and provides many children with their first repeated model of letter sounds. That model is flawed: consonants are presented with added schwa sounds (“cuh,” “buh,” “duh”), which directly undermines accurate phoneme knowledge and makes blending unnecessarily difficult.
When Sue Lloyd herself acknowledged that the sounds in the programme “are not that great,” she was pointing to the same problem I’ve raised consistently: once children internalize distorted sounds, it is extremely difficult to overwrite them. For vulnerable learners, this can be the very moment they disengage.
So, the question isn’t whether you’ve heard of BabyTV — it’s whether we, as educators and advocates, are willing to confront the damage caused by these entrenched models and demand correction. Dismissing it as “unsuitable material out there” evades the central issue: this isn’t random entertainment; it’s a systematic misrepresentation of the code children are expected to master.
Additional notes from 7th September 2026:
Even if the next set of reading data due out this month shows a decline in UK reading standards, it’s quite a stretch to claim that the odd schwa is to blame for a population level reading problem. You are clearly very passionate about your work, and a great help to the children you work with. I think we agree that the schwa should be avoided in early phonics, but I’m just not persuaded that the evidence supports giving it so much weight.
My response:
Dr Karen Faulds with respect, calling this “the odd schwa” trivializes what is in fact a systematic distortion. If a child can learn to read once he is taught to unlearn what he has been taught and then given the correct sounds of letters — as in the case of the more than 80 so‑called “dyslexic” children I have taught — then clearly the initial mis‑teaching is the barrier.
Parents who have used my book have seen their children begin reading within weeks (example https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2021/09/tips-to-australian-teacher.html ).
That is not anecdote; it is repeated, observable evidence that correcting the extraneous sounds unlocks reading.
If, as you say, the schwa is not the main cause, then we are left with a pressing question: what is? The percentage of children leaving school functionally illiterate has remained stubbornly flat for decades despite phonics being universally adopted. If distorted consonant sounds are not the primary reason children shut down, then please explain what is. Because until that thorn is pulled out, all other debates about sampling or secondary factors are distractions from the root cause.
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