Rebuke for schools that won't change their reading habits and teach phonics

Synthetic phonics has been on the national curriculum since 2006 and all schools have had teaching materials for phonics since September.

But Schools Secretary Ed Balls has admitted he is becoming impatient as thousands of schools have yet to introduce the approach.

And it is feared that the reluctance of some teachers to ditch discredited Seventies teaching theories could hamper the progress of thousands of pupils.

The Government had previously championed a controversial "searchlights" reading system which included some phonic work but also borrowed from the failed strategies of the past, including "look and guess" and whole word recognition.

Children were encouraged to guess at words from pictures or the context of the storyline, leaving them confused when left to read text without these cues.

But in 2006 ministers accepted the recommendation of a Government reading review - led by former Ofsted director Sir Jim Rose - that synthetic phonics should become the prime reading system.

Phonics was the main way of teaching reading for years until the Sixties.

It involves teaching letter sounds before blending the sounds together to form words.

At a school in Camden, North London, Mr Balls said: "We are clear that all schools should be using phonics now - and this should be part of the basic training for teachers and teaching assistants.

"We think at the moment probably around three- quarters would be using phonics in the really systematic way. We want to get that up to 100 per cent. We are pretty encouraged. It takes time.

"While all schools are using phonics, not every school yet is using it in the way in which we would ideally like.

"Every child in every school needs to be taught reading through phonics and I am impatient for all schools and early years settings to meet the high standards of the best."

Investigations by Sir Jim revealed that only three-quarters were using phonics properly.

He said: "Although much excellent progress in the teaching of early reading and writing is evident, I do not believe we have yet reached the point where such teaching is the norm for all children."

Tory schools spokesman Nick Gibb said: "Increasingly, the evidence is overwhelming that using proper synthetic phonics programmes in the first year of primary school is by far the most effective method of teaching children to read."