A warning light is only useful if somebody responds to it

Dr Amy Hulson-Jones, Education Researcher Wrexham University

PISA is a warning light not a diagnostic test. But the fact that a warning light does not identify the precise fault does not diminish its significance. Particularly when it has been flashing for nearly two decades.

Brenig Davies’ recent Nation.Cymru article sets out a persistent and well documented pattern of low performance, as measured by PISA. He also highlights how, across seven PISA assessments, successive Welsh education ministers have responded in remarkably similar ways: disappointment, concern and assurance that we will do better. Davies and others have already set out the statistics and so there is little value in repeating them here.

Jones and Downing’s article for The Conversation published on September 9^th, 2026, points out that PISA does not provide a diagnostic assessment of an individual child, nor can it establish that a particular curriculum or teaching method caused a country’s results. After seven assessments and a persistent pattern of comparatively poor performance, the question is no longer whether PISA can diagnose the precise fault, but how Wales responds.

We do have a substantial interdisciplinary science about reading which has accumulated over decades. We now better understand the how reading develops and how appropriate, timely assessment can establish where an individual learner is struggling. This information can inform what next step a teacher needs to take to help a learner make progress.

I do not feel that it is reasonable to expect teachers to navigate an extensive and often contested research literature to determine which approaches are best supported by evidence and then translate those findings into coherent classroom practice. If we want different outcomes, teachers need more than another reflection of the problem. They need clear, evidence-informed guidance, practical professional learning and enough specificity to know what exactly to do and when to meet the needs of learners in their class.

Encouragingly, this is also the direction in which Welsh Government policy been moving.  Earlier guidance left too much room for approaches in which children were encouraged to draw on pictures and context and other cues to help identify a word. That position has now shifted. Curriculum for Wales guidance has been strengthened, and in March 2026 the Literacy Expert Panel made the expectation clearer still.

Its Principles for Teaching Language and Literacy in Wales state that literacy teaching should be systematic, structured and explicit, phonics should be taught through a clearly defined sequence, and learners should not be encouraged to guess unfamiliar words. Beginning readers need a secure knowledge of the alphabetic code and sufficient carefully sequenced practice for decoding to become accurate and increasingly automatic.

Reading is a complex learned skill and children need explicit teaching to understand how written symbols represent the spoken language they already know. If those foundations remain insecure, asking children to compensate by guessing from pictures or context risks masking the underlying difficulty.

None of this means that phonics constitutes the whole of reading instruction. Fluency, oral language, vocabulary, background knowledge are all essential to successful literacy development and comprehension should be developed alongside increasingly fluent word reading.

Legitimate questions

This distinction is important when considering England’s approach to early reading. Bradbury and Wyse (2025), for example, argue that synthetic phonics has become dominant within English reading policy and question the strength of evidence. Such critiques raise legitimate questions concerning policy, implementation and the needs of learners who do not make expected progress.

Framing the debate as a choice between phonics and a broader conception of reading risks creating a false dichotomy. Criticism of a phonics-only model should not be allowed to stand as criticism of SSP itself unless advocates of SSP are actually proposing such a model. I do not know any teacher or researcher in the field of reading who would advocate for a phonics only approach.

Colleagues and I explored these issues in a Welsh Government-commissioned study of literacy provision across Wales. Participating teachers identified a need for greater training in the foundational components of reading and for clearer guidance from Welsh Government concerning phonics programmes. Drawing on these findings and the wider evidence reviewed, the report recommended greater attention to strong foundations in early reading, a review of the evidence informing reading policy and practice in Wales, improved provision within Initial Teacher Education and professional learning.

Opportunity

Wales now has an opportunity to respond with greater clarity about what effective literacy teaching looks like, stronger support for teachers to deliver it, and earlier identification of pupils who are beginning to fall behind.

One way forward would be a ‘Response to Learner’ framework, which would involve assessing what pupils know and can do, provide evidence-informed teaching and intervention matched to identified need, monitor progress, and increase or adapt support when pupils do not respond as expected. Rather than waiting for difficulties to become entrenched, assessment would become the starting point for an appropriate instructional response.

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