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A straw poll among 25 NQTs last year suggested that they had, on average, received 2 hours (in total) of phonics training from their ITT institutions. https://twitter.com/MrMcCormackHOY/status/1343651239729496064
Perhaps this is why those schools have to ensure that all of their teachers (including KS2) receive four full days of phonics training.
This is undertaken at schools' expense and backfill costs and delivered to teachers who may have just spent £27,000 on three years of degree-level instruction.The problem is deeper than just phonics with new teachers exhibiting little understanding of how children learn to read.
Furthermore, there seems to have been little exploration on ITT courses of the advances in cognitive science and how that relates to reading and general pedagogy. Plenty of Piaget though and they can all back display boards in vivd colours and ensure borders are perpendicular.
Not all of our ITT institutions are culpable - there are some groundbreaking exceptions- but the number is small and when one reads the missives from the leading ITT academics the deficit in student knowledge is explained. https://www.thereadingape.com/single-post/2019/04/17/so-hands-up-who-hates-phonics-some-very-influential-people
It is interesting that UCL still pedals Reading Recovery and anti-phonics research. Much of the research from UK education academics is at best unhelpful and appears to be self-publicising attention seeking. Compare this to the work done in the US by @TimRasinski1 and McCandliss.
As @debbiehepp suggests the issue does not merely lie with the institutions but with those who hold them accountable.Any student in any primary ITT context beyond the first year should have a cogent, detailed and coherent answer to the question, "How do children learn to read?"
And if they mention 'whole word' or 'whole language' then the institution should proceed directly to 'special measures'. It's the equivalent of asking a doctor how to treat a ruptured appendix and them replying, "leaches of course!"
Phonics instruction is not of itself the answer and there has been far too much expectation placed on it to remedy the nation's reading deficits. Beck's (1998) basketball analogy is useful here...
Dribbling is essential to basketball but great dribbling skills will not a great basketball player make. Nonetheless, all great basketball players have excellent dribbling skills.
