Evaluation of the Trial of the UK Phonics Screening Check in South Australian schools

Between 7 and 18 August 2017, the South Australian Department for Education and Child Development (DECD) conducted a pilot of the UK Phonics Screening Check (PSC) for Reception and Year 1 students across the state. The PSC consists of a collection of 40 real and pseudo-words which were administered by teachers one-on-one with students. The structure of the PSC comprises a series of 12 simple pseudo-words, followed by 8 simple real words, 8 complex pseudo-words and 12 complex real words. DECD collected and collated the data of 4,406 students from 268 teachers across 56 primary schools. This report presents the independent evaluation of the pilot which was conducted to understand the usefulness of the PSC for school leaders and teachers with regard to their students’ phonics development.