Whiteknights has a whole school commitment to the development of reading. We maintain a love of reading and a passion for the development of skills throughout our school so children become fluent and excited readers ready for secondary school.
We started teaching Read Write Inc. as our systematic synthetic phonics scheme in February 2013. Regardless of which scheme a school selects –it is the rigour and the consistency that is in place that ultimately sees it as successful. Due to us teaching the programme with such fidelity and our pupils’ high attainment, we were awarded a ‘Model School’ status for Read Write Inc. in 2016.
In December 2018, Ofsted stated “The teaching of phonics is excellent. Staff have benefited from high-quality training over a long and sustained period of time. As a result, they are highly skilled in delivering an extremely effective programme that systematically builds upon what pupils already know. Pupils do not move on through the programme until they have successfully embedded their learning. This expertise has been externally recognised and the school is designated as a centre of excellence. Pupils consistently achieve significantly above the expected standard in the Year 1 phonics screening check. The whole school is benefiting from the formal introduction of phonics into the Nursery setting.“