Changing School Part Way Through Phonics
Moving school part way through phonics is disruptive to the labels, not to the learning. Your child is not starting again. The sounds they already know are the same sounds at the new school, taught in a different order, under different names, from different books. The work for you is a fortnight of translation: find out what the new school uses, tell them what your child has already covered, and expect the reading book to look odd for a few weeks. Here is how that actually goes.
Will my child have to start phonics all over again?
No, although the first few weeks can look like it. Every programme used in English primaries teaches the same underlying code, and a child who can blend s-a-t can blend it whatever the book is called. What differs is the running order.
Little Wandle introduces the vowel digraphs ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air and er in Reception spring. Read Write Inc holds most of them back to Set 2 and Set 3. Sounds-Write does not teach any digraphs until Unit 11 of its Initial Code. So a child arriving from one school may already know sounds the new class has not met, and be missing one or two the new class covered last month. Both are normal and both are quickly patched.
What schools generally do is assess, quietly and in the first week or two, to find the gaps. That assessment is not a judgement on your child or on the old school.
Why do the books look completely different?
Because a decodable book describes the fit between a text and one particular child, not a fixed level of difficulty. The new school's books are matched to the new school's teaching order, so a book that looks harder or easier than your child's last one usually just means the two programmes reach that content at different points.
Expect the first books to look easy. That is often deliberate, while the new teacher works out exactly where your child sits. The book coming home is practice, not a test.
How do I work out which programme the new school uses?
Ask, and if the answer is vague, read the book. Each programme leaves fingerprints.
| What you see on the book or in the folder | Almost certainly |
|---|---|
| Sets, and a frog called Fred | Read Write Inc |
| A colour plus a number, such as Pink 1 or Red 2 | Bug Club Phonics |
| A phase number with a school term beside it | Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised |
| A bare phase number and nothing else | Letters and Sounds, or a programme descended from it |
| Level 1 to Level 6 | Twinkl Phonics |
| Initial Code, Extended Code, or Unit numbers | Sounds-Write |
| Seven groups, 42 sounds, actions and songs | Jolly Phonics |
If you want the longer version of this detective work, this walks through it. Get the answer in writing if you can, because it makes every later conversation shorter.
What should I tell the new teacher?
Three things, and they take a minute. The name of the previous programme. The exact stage your child had reached, as the old school labelled it. And what you see at home when your child reads.
If you can, ask the old school before you leave for a note of the current stage and the tricky words covered. Most will do it happily, and it saves the new school a week of guessing. If you have the last few reading books, take a photo of the covers; the level codes on them are often more precise than anything anyone remembers.
What if the new school seems further ahead?
Say so early, and be specific rather than anxious. "He has not met the split spellings yet" is actionable. "She seems behind" is not.
Schools run short daily catch-up sessions for exactly this situation, and a child with a small, identified gap is the easiest kind of gap to close. A handful of missing sounds is a few weeks of work, not a year.
What if the new school seems further behind?
This is the more common complaint and usually the less serious one. Two stages in nearly every programme teach no new sounds at all: the one about adjacent consonants, which is Phase 4 in Little Wandle and Bug Club's Yellow bands and Units 8 to 10 in Sounds-Write, and the fluency and spelling stage that comes later. Both look like stalling to a parent and are nothing of the kind. A child who spends half a term reading stamp and crunch without meeting a single new sound is doing necessary work.
If your child genuinely is being taught sounds they mastered a year ago, raise it. Ask what the assessment showed and when they will move them on.
Your child is not starting again. They are learning the same code with different labels.
We are moving during Year 1. What about the screening check?
The check follows the child, not the school. It is taken in June of Year 1, one to one with a teacher, and it is 40 words read aloud: 20 real words and 20 made-up ones, the made-up ones printed beside a small alien so children know not to hunt for a meaning. Those pseudo words are the whole design, because they cannot be recognised from memory or guessed from context, so what is being measured is decoding.
A threshold mark is published each June and has been 32 out of 40 for many years, though it is set annually, so treat it as indicative. Whichever school your child is at in June administers it, and the headteacher must report the score to you by the end of the summer term. Children who do not meet the standard are considered for a retake the following June with support in between. The arrangements are published on gov.uk.
If you are moving in the spring term of Year 1, it is worth mentioning the check explicitly to the new school, simply so nobody assumes the other school had it covered.
The stages have completely different names. How do they line up?
Roughly, and roughly is enough for a parent. For a child in Year 1, the equivalent points look like this.
| Programme | Where a Year 1 child usually sits |
|---|---|
| Little Wandle | Year 1, which is Phase 5 across the whole year |
| Read Write Inc | Set 3, with Pink, Orange and Yellow storybooks |
| Bug Club Phonics | Blue 1 and Blue 2 |
| Letters and Sounds | Phase 5 |
| Essential Letters and Sounds | Phase 5 |
| Twinkl Phonics | Level 5 |
| Sounds-Write | Extended Code |
| Jolly Phonics | Beyond the 42 sounds, on alternative spellings |
Do not use this to argue with a teacher. Use it to understand what you are being told. For the phase numbers themselves, the full breakdown is here.
What should I do at home during the changeover?
Less than you think, and keep it steady. The routine is the thing your child can carry between schools, so protect it even in a week when everything else has been packed into boxes.
Read the book that comes home once. Wait five seconds before helping, because most children who are going to get there get there at about four. When they are stuck, give the sounds rather than the word, so "s-t-o-p" hands them the win. Tell them the tricky words outright and move on, because those cannot be sounded out. Stop while they still want more. And keep reading aloud to them from much harder books, which is the track that carries vocabulary and appetite and is unaffected by any of this.
If the new school turns out to use Read Write Inc, one thing is worth knowing in advance: the book that comes home is a Book Bag Book, a different story from the Storybook read in class, built from the same sounds and the same green words. Parents lose whole evenings to that discovery, and it is explained here.
How long does it take to settle?
For the phonics itself, usually a few weeks. The assessment happens early, the gaps are small, and the daily teaching is systematic enough to close them. For your child, longer, because a new classroom is a bigger deal than a new set of books, and tiredness shows up in reading before it shows up anywhere else.
Give it half a term before drawing conclusions. If, after that, your child is stopping on more than about one word in ten in a book the school has sent home, that is worth raising with the teacher as a specific observation rather than a worry.
Where this goes next
Get the programme name, get the stage, hand over what the old school knew, and then let the new school teach. The code does not change between schools. Only the packaging does.
Lindo Phonics is not connected to Read Write Inc, Little Wandle, Bug Club, Twinkl Phonics, Sounds-Write, Jolly Phonics or Essential Letters and Sounds, and is not endorsed by them. We match the published progression so a story only uses sounds your child has already been taught.
Common questions
Will my child have to start phonics again at a new school?
No. The underlying code is the same everywhere, so what changes is the order sounds are taught in and the names used for the stages. Schools normally assess in the first week or two to find any gaps.
How do I find out which phonics programme the new school uses?
Ask the class teacher or the office directly, and get it in writing if you can. If the answer is vague, the reading book usually gives it away, for example Sets and a frog called Fred means Read Write Inc.
What should I tell the new teacher?
The previous programme's name, the exact stage your child had reached as the old school labelled it, and what you see when they read at home. Those three things save a week of guesswork.
Should I ask the old school for anything before we leave?
Yes, ask for a note of the current stage and the tricky words covered so far. Photographing the covers of the last few reading books is a useful backup, because level codes are more precise than memory.
The new school's books look much easier. Is my child being held back?
Often the first books are deliberately easy while the teacher works out where your child sits. Give it a few weeks, then ask what the assessment showed.
The new school's books look much harder. What do I do?
Say so early and be specific about which sounds your child has not met. A small identified gap is usually a few weeks of catch-up work rather than a long term problem.
My child seems to be learning no new sounds at all. Is that normal?
Very often, yes. Two stages in nearly every programme teach no new sounds, the adjacent consonants stage and the later fluency and spelling stage, and both are routinely misread as stalling.
We are moving in Year 1. Who does the phonics screening check?
Whichever school your child is at in June administers it, and the headteacher must report the score to you by the end of the summer term. It is worth mentioning the check to the new school if you move in the spring.
What is in the phonics screening check?
Forty words read aloud one to one with a teacher: 20 real words and 20 made-up ones printed beside a small alien. The made-up words are there so the check measures decoding rather than memory or guessing.
Do the stage names from different schemes translate?
Roughly. A Year 1 child would typically be at Little Wandle Year 1, Read Write Inc Set 3, Bug Club Blue, Phase 5 in Letters and Sounds or ELS, Twinkl Level 5, or the Sounds-Write Extended Code.
Should we keep using the old school's books at home?
There is no harm in rereading them, since rereading easy text builds fluency. Just make sure the new school's book gets read too, because that is the one matched to current teaching.
How long before things settle down?
For the phonics itself, usually a few weeks. For your child, give it half a term, because a new classroom is a bigger adjustment than a new set of books.
My child has gone off reading since the move. What should I do?
Shorten the sessions and stop while they still want more, and keep reading aloud to them from books they love. If it has not improved after half a term, raise it with the teacher as a specific observation.
Does any of this change if we move between countries in the UK?
The teaching of phonics is broadly similar, but the Year 1 phonics screening check is an England arrangement. Ask the new school directly what assessments they run and when.
Same sounds, new labels
Once the new school has given you a programme and a stage, we can build a story that uses only the sounds your child has already been taught, with their own name in it.
Make a story First book free. No card needed.