The independently appointed advisory panel met for the first time on 27 February. The panel is due to meet again on 16 April when they intend to finalise the assessment criteria they will use to award quality marks; subsequent meetings have not yet been confirmed.

The phonics screening check was introduced in 2012, when 58 per cent of Year 1 pupils met the expected standard. By 2016, this had risen to 81 per cent. There are now 147,000 more six year olds on track to become excellent readers since the introduction of the check.

This year, we are funding ten phonics partnerships up to a total of £75,000. This involves a high performing lead school working with neighbouring schools to improve the quality of teaching through systematic synthetic phonics. In March 2016, we funded ten phonics roadshows and this summer we are holding a further 24 phonics roadshows around the country, including in Opportunity Areas. These events will highlight best practice and promote the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics as the most effective approach to early reading in primary schools.

We will look for further ways to build on this progress to make sure that all children become fluent readers early in primary school.

The phonics screening check was introduced in 2012, when 58 per cent of Year 1 pupils met the expected standard. By 2016, this had risen to 81 per cent.

Of those pupils meeting the phonics standard in year 1 in 2015, almost 9 in 10 (89 per cent) went on to reach the expected standard in reading at the end of Key Stage 1. There are now 147,000 more six-year-olds on track to become excellent readers since the introduction of the check.

In June 2015, the Department published the report of the evaluation of the phonics screening check conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research, which covered the three annual administrations of the check between 2012 and 2014. Its key finding was that the check has had a positive impact on pupils’ attainment in phonics. The evaluation report is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/phonics-screening-check-evaluation-final-report.

It is vital that pupils learn to read in the early years of primary school.

There is a substantial body of evidence which demonstrates that systematic synthetic phonics is the most effective method for teaching all pupils to read. The phonics screening check for pupils in year 1 was introduced nationally in 2012, to make sure that pupils have learned phonic decoding to an age appropriate standard. Thanks to the hard work of teachers, our continued focus on raising standards and the increased emphasis on phonics‎, there are now an additional 147,000 six-year-olds on track to becoming fluent readers. Given this success, we continue to support the administration of the phonics screening check in our primary schools.