The screening comprises a list of 40 real and nonsense-words (pseudo words), which your child reads one-to-one to a teacher. Pseudo words allow the assessment to focus purely on decoding phonic knowledge.  As pseudo-words are new to all children, they do not favour those with a good vocabulary knowledge or large sight word memory.

 

 

The words in the screening incorporate phonics skills acquired by the children in both Year 1 and Year R. It is conducted in a quiet room without distractions.

 

The National threshold of achievement in the phonics screening is 80%. Those children in Year 1 who do not meet the assessment threshold will receive additional support and then complete the screening again during the summer of Year 2.