Northern Ireland reviews controversial teaching method after failings in Wales and Scotland

Last year ITV News revealed ‘cueing’ is not only commonplace in schools in Wales, but is regularly praised by school inspectors, ITV News Wales Reporter Rhys Williams has the latest

“He’s got dyslexia. He’s never going to read. Your expectations are too high.”

This is what Dr Gillian Evans says she was told about her son, Thomas, when he was struggling to read.

Dr Evans, a microbiologist, eventually removed Thomas from his South Ayrshire school when he was ten-years-old after he told his parents they would be “better off without him”.

Thomas was taught to read by guessing words from pictures or the context of a sentence. This is commonly known as “cueing” and there is no evidence it is effective.

Last year we revealed cueing is not only commonplace in schools in Wales, but is regularly praised by school inspectors. The Welsh government has since published proposals to change its guidance to schools.

Our investigation has found this long debunked approach to the teaching of reading can also be found in many schools in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Following our reporting, the Stormont Executive has withdrawn support for its literacy framework and told ITV News it will be launching a new strategy based on the evidence of how children learn to read.

One of the UK’s leading reading scientists says ITV News’s “vital investigation” shows many children across the UK are getting “reading instruction that is not effective,” and has called on policymakers to commit to providing “evidence-based instruction to all schools.”

“It’s time for policymakers to end the lottery of learning to read by committing to provide evidence-based instruction in all schools,” says cognitive psychologist Professor Kathy Rastle.

“Overwhelming evidence”

Decades of scientific research has shown that virtually all children can learn to read if taught in line with the evidence. Despite this, illiteracy rates in the UK have remained stubbornly high for more than a century.

In Wales in particular, the figures are shocking. The schools’ watchdog, Estyn, says up to 30% of Welsh children start secondary school unable to use basic English reading skills well.

For most of the twentieth century, British children were taught to read using a mixture of phonics – which teaches the relationships between letters and sounds – and cueing.

Decades ago scientists found that only one of these methods is effective for the act of reading words, known as decoding. Using both approaches can even be damaging, as teaching children to use cues can undermine phonics teaching.

“There is overwhelming evidence that children need to understand that letters stand for sounds, and that the best way to teach this is through systematic phonics,” Professor Rastle of Royal Holloway University tells me.

“In contrast, there is no evidence that teaching reading through “cueing” is effective.”

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England

In 2005, frustrated with a lack of improvement in reading levels despite record investment in schools, the Labour government launched a parliamentary inquiry into the teaching of early reading. Retired headteacher and former Ofsted Chief Inspector Sir Jim Rose concluded that the old system of using both phonics and cueing should be replaced with using systematic synthetic phonics.

His recommendations were accepted in full and after two decades of cross-party reforms, reading levels in England have steadily risen to near the top of the international rankings.

These reforms were not replicated in the other nations of the UK.Scotland

Standardised reading tests show that between 11% and 20% of children leave primary schools in Scotland functionally illiterate.

The controversial programme which first popularised cueing is called Reading Recovery. A long term study in 2022 found that the expensive one-on-one tutoring programme for young children had overall negative impacts on children.

Despite this, East Renfrewshire Council and Education Scotland recently publicised its use of the programme on struggling readers.

The most common programme used to teach reading in primary schools in Scotland is called Active Literacy. The government paid North Lanarkshire Council more than £1.1m to develop it more than a quarter of a century ago. The programme encourages children to “look at the pictures” to read words if they are stuck.

Gillian Evans’ son Thomas was taught to read using Active Literacy in his South Ayrshire primary school. While Thomas’ twin sister excelled at reading, Thomas did not.

When she raised concerns, Gillian was told that “boys are slower than girls” so she should be more firm with him and “wait and see”. Years later, Thomas was diagnosed with developmental dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADHD.

“All the concerns we had are the early signs of these conditions,” said Gillian, “but no professional teacher in an accredited dyslexia friendly school warned us that Thomas was at risk of literacy failure if he was not given the correct teaching instruction.”

At ten years old Thomas had an emotional breakdown, telling his parents they would be “better off without him.”

His mum took him out of school to teach him to read herself using a systematic synthetic phonics programme. Within three years Thomas was fluent and is now thriving.

“He was set up to fail”, Gillian tells me, “every day he went in to school and the teachers were not teaching him what I later learned was decoding. He did not know how to decode words to read them, and he was taught to guess.”

Thomas’s story is not unique. Reading experts believe that while some children learn to read adequately regardless of the method of teaching, many need explicit and systematic phonics instruction.

These struggling readers often come from disadvantaged backgrounds where they don’t read at home or have a specific reading challenge like dyslexia. For these children, cueing can undermine their reading progress.

“We can’t just immerse them in books,” says Geraldine Millar, Headteacher of St Ninian’s Primary School in Glasgow, “we have to teach them the code and that unlocks everything.”

Mrs Millar has introduced a systematic synthetic phonics approach in two schools which have led to remarkable turnarounds in reading outcomes, particularly among disadvantaged students.

Despite this success, she was initially asked by her superiors why she was going against government guidance. She insisted the results “spoke for themselves.”

“We talk about equity, if we want to level that playing field this is one of the simplest ways to do it. It doesn’t cost a lot of money, what it costs is developing that skillset within the teachers.”

Mrs Millar says every child in Scotland should have the same advantage through a systematic phonics approach and regrets how she used to teach reading.

“In my experience as a teacher – which is now 30 plus years – I have a guilt about how I previously taught children. I think how on earth did they learn?”

The Scottish Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth wouldn’t talk with us on camera, and the department wouldn’t answer a direct question about whether children should be taught using cueing.

In a statement a spokesman said that it is up to schools to decide how to teach reading and that literacy levels in Scotland’s schools are at a “record high.”

The spokesman added: “In 2024, Education Scotland published updated guidance and resources on early reading which included guidance to schools on effective implementation of phonics as a key part of their overall approach to teaching reading – however this is just one approach to the teaching of reading.”

Northern Ireland

Since 2011, the literacy framework in Northern Ireland has also included a reference to encouraging children to use a “range of reading cues”.

Last month, the education minister withdrew his support for this strategy as it “implied cueing was an acceptable form of teaching.”

“Cueing is still very prevalent within Northern Ireland,” says Nicky Humphries, a specialist reading tutor.

“Pupils are taught and encouraged that meaning should be their first focus,” she tells me, as well as being encouraged to “look at the picture” in order to read words.

In an exclusive interview with ITV News, Education Minister Paul Givan said our investigation had demonstrated there is a “clear challenge as to what is going on in within our classrooms.”

“Our literacy framework in Northern Ireland has been based around phonics and systematic synthetic phonics is the approach which is the most fundamental aspect to it.

“But there obviously was implied reference to cueing as also being an approach. So even though phonics is the core, I felt that there were mixed messages around that and that has now been withdrawn.”

Mr Givan says he will be leading a “new approach to literacy” which will reflect the evidence of how children learn to read.

“In England, I look at the literacy specialist hubs that are there that support schools, that has been transformative. That is something that I want to look at here in Northern Ireland.

“England has moved forward over the past 10 years. We need to make sure that Northern Ireland, from being in a good place certainly on literacy, I think we can do even more.”

Wales

Following our investigation last year, the Welsh government admitted it needed to clarify its guidance to schools on the teaching of reading. We analysed hundreds of school inspection reports and found that inspectors not only routinely praise the use of “cueing” but on one occasion a school was criticised for not using the long debunked method.

The government later told ITV News children should not be using picture and context cues to decode words and it has opened a consultation which proposes several changes to its curriculum framework. However, it is clear the message has not yet filtered through to its own local authorities, let alone classrooms.

Cardiff Council is holding a training course for teachers in a programme called “Rainbow Reading” this week. The programme explicitly promotes cueing and downplays the importance of phonics. Neither Cardiff Council nor Rainbow Reading responded to a request for comment.

Both the Welsh curriculum and its Scottish equivalent give teachers freedom in how they teach reading. But Dr Jeremy Law from the University of Glasgow is concerned some teachers aren’t themselves taught about the science of reading.

“Many teachers struggle to meet the specific needs of struggling readers,” said Dr Law, “often because they don’t have access to research-based methods for reading instruction.

“That’s why it’s so important to provide educators with thorough professional development—giving them the knowledge and tools they need to help every student succeed in reading.”

Professor Kathy Rastle of Royal Holloway University, says reading is “too important to be left to chance.”

“Imagine if we were having the same discussion about medical practice. Would we be satisfied to say that individual doctors should be left to make their own decisions about how to treat patients irrespective of the scientific evidence?”

“Every child deserves instruction that’s based on the evidence. Learning to read is just too important to be left to chance.”

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