Statutory Assessment Series: Predictions and Preparation for the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check 

Each year in June, all eligible Year 1 pupils participate in the phonics screening check and some Year 2 pupils will resit it if they did not pass when they were in Year 1. If children are absent during this week, then they will complete the check during variation week (the week after). 

What Is the Phonics Screening Check? 

The phonics screening check consists of 40 words; 20 of the words are real words and 20 of the words are pseudo-words. Pseudo-words, also commonly referred to as alien words or nonsense words, are words that do not have any meaning in English, although the children should be able to decode them, as they do have plausible spellings in English. These words have an image of an alien-like character next to them, hence the term ‘alien word’. 

The pass mark for the check is variable; however, it has consistently been 32 since the check began. The pass mark is released after the check. 

The phonics screening check is split into two sections and progressively becomes more complex. The words in section 2 contain slightly more difficult GPCs (grapheme-phoneme correspondences) than the words in section 1. Some of the words are longer and there are more letter-sound correspondences. Children are allowed to sound out the words and are allowed to self-correct. Children can have a break during the phonics screening check.   

What Is the Purpose of the Phonics Screening Check? 

‘The purpose of the phonics screening check will be to confirm that all children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard. Children who have not reached this level should receive extra support from their school to ensure they can improve their decoding skills, and will then have the opportunity to retake the phonics screening check.’ (Standards & Testing Agency, 2017) 

The phonics screening check is designed to confirm that pupils can decode to an age-appropriate level but also to help educators identify which pupils need more support. Early reading is vital. If children cannot decode and access texts, then accessing the rest of the curriculum will be more difficult.  

Why Does the Phonics Screening Check Include Pseudo-Words? 

‘Compared with other reading subskills, such as vocabulary and verbal memory, pseudoword decoding is the best single predictor of word identification for poor and normal readers.’ (Ravthon, N., 2004) 

Using pseudo-words is the purest form of decoding assessment. If all the words in the check were real words, children who have more reading experience and who are more confident readers would have a better chance of passing the check than those children who have less reading experience and confidence. They might have learned the words by sight, so using pseudo-words confirms that they can decode the words. The real words in the check include between 40% and 60% less common words to try and make sure children are decoding the words, rather than reading them by sight.  

Administering the Phonics Screening Check 

The check should be administered by an educator who is appropriately phonics-trained and up-to-date with the phonics screening check training and instructions. A high level of phonics knowledge is needed to administer the check, as set out in the Assessment framework for the development of the year 1 phonics screening check’ guidance document.  

The phonics screening check should be administered by an educator who is known by the pupil so that they feel comfortable. However, the administrator cannot be a relative of the child.  

The check should take place in a quiet, well-lit, comfortable space with no display materials to help. If multiple adults are administering the check at the same time, you should use separate rooms so the pupils don’t disturb each other. 

Pronunciation of Pseudo-Words 

According to the phonics screening check: scoring guidance, ‘when decoding a pseudo-word, all plausible alternative and regional pronunciations are acceptable.’ 

The table above shows the pseudo-words from Section 1 of the 2025 paper and an example of  acceptable pronunciation. If children have been taught the ‘a’ representing long-a like in angel, then ‘ags’ could be pronounced with the long-a phoneme.

Phonics Screening Check and Phonics Shed Comparison Chart 

Our downloadable Phonics Screening Check and Phonics Shed Comparison Chart show all the graphemes that are listed in the STA guidance and where they are taught within Phonics Shed’s DfE validated SSP (systematic synthetic phonics) programme. It shows the grapheme, phoneme, an example word and the Phonics Shed Chapter and Set that it is taught in.  

All of the GPCs that appear in section 1 of the phonics screening check are taught in Chapter 2 or Chapter 3 of Phonics Shed, which is taught in Reception. Therefore, by the end of Reception, pupils should be able to decode and read all of the words in section 1. This is half of the words in the phonics screening check.  

Section 1  

Section 1 can contain words with the following phonological structure.  

Section 1 of the phonics screening check usually follows the phonological structure of CVC words, VCC word/s, CCVC words and then CVCC words. 

Phonological structure means that C is used to mark each consonant or consonant digraph and V marks a vowel phoneme. For example, the word ‘chips’ is a CVCC word, as ‘ch’ is the consonant digraph, ‘i’ is the vowel, ‘p’ is another consonant and ‘s’ is the final consonant.  

Orthographic structure refers to the letter in each word, as shown in the table below.  

The Assessment framework for the development of the Year 1 phonics screening check includes guidance on both, but it is mostly the phonological structure that affects the difficulty for children. 

Section 2 

Section 2 of the phonics screening check becomes more complex, the phonological structure of the words becomes longer and it includes split digraphs. The end of the check includes two-syllable words. 

Section 2 can contain words with the following phonological structure. 

The usual structure of section 2 is twelve real words and eight pseudo-words:  

Which GPCs are not on the Phonics Screening Check? 

There are GPCs that are not included in the phonics screening check. These include additional doubles, such as ‘pp’, ‘tt’ and ‘dd’, the trigraph ‘ure’ and the digraph ‘oe’.  

The following graphemes are also not included in the phonics screening check:  

However, these GPCs should still be taught as they are part of the curriculum and important in teaching phonics. The phonics screening check should not dictate your phonics curriculum.  

Predictions Based on Previous Papers 

EdShed Phonics and Spelling Trainer Amanda Davis has made some predictions of GPCs that could be included in the phonics screening check.  

Disclaimer: Amanda does not have any type of inside knowledge about the papers. These predictions are based on previous papers. 

1. Some GPCs that have not been included before could appear. 

The following GPCs are listed on the STA guidance but have never been included in the phonics screening check. 

The DfE (Department for Education) said that they would all be used over time, so there is a high chance that some of them will appear on this year’s check. However, last year, none of these GPCs on this list were in the phonics screening check. 

There are very few words for ‘ou’ representing /oa/ and most are followed by an ‘l’ which is heavily affected by accent, therefore it is probably being avoided.  

2. Double letter ‘ff’ or ‘ll’. 

The double letter ‘ff’ has been absent for a number of years, so it could be on the 2026 phonics screening check. The double letter ‘ll’ is quite commonly used, so that could also be on this year’s check.  

3. Alternate pronunciations for ‘ou’ and ‘ow’.

Amanda thinks that some of the alternate pronunciations for ‘ou’ and ‘ow’ could appear on this year’s check.  

4. The ‘ck’ grapheme.  

The ‘ck’ grapheme has been on the phonics screening check every year but was not included in the 2025 phonics screening check, so Amanda thinks that it could be on this year’s check.  

5. The ‘air’ grapheme. 

The ‘air’ grapheme has not been included in the past few years, so Amanda thinks this is likely to return in this year’s paper.  

How Can You Help Children Prepare for the Phonics Screening Check? 

Read as much as possible

Our first tip is quite obvious to most teachers, but it is well worth noting! The best practice is to get children reading as much as possible. This can be decodable books but should also include wider children’s literature. Some books even have pseudo-words in them, as shown in the image above from The Smeds and The Smoos by Julia Donaldson. If you are reading with children or parents are reading with children, then you can ask children to just read the decodable words or the words that contain the graphemes that you want the children to focus on. In the example above, we could ask the child/children to read the word ‘young’ to practise the ‘ou’ representing /u/ sound.  

It does not have to be books; reading is everywhere. You can ask children to read signs, boxes, labels etc.  

Phonics Shed’s Recap Chapter 2 to 4b Planning and Resources 

The image above shows Phonics Shed’s Year 1 Medium Term Plan. It has been carefully designed to give educators time to consolidate learning and prepare for the phonics screening check; therefore, all learning that may be covered in the check is completed by summer 1 and there is specific time allocated on the plan to recap Chapter 2 to 4b.  

Phonics Shed has specific planning to recap Chapter 2 to 4b. This is four weeks’ worth of planning and resources, which can be used prior to the phonics screening check. As well as recapping Chapter 2 to 4b, it also includes planning and resources for word-level fluency, sentence-level fluency, skills and addresses common errors that children make in the check. Click here to view and download.  

Assessment and Application Planning and Resources 

The Year 1 Medium Term Plan also allocates time for assessment and application, with some focusing on practising for the phonics screening check.  They include guidance to carry out the assessment and a selection of appropriately levelled independent activities for the rest of the class to complete. 

Provision 

Increasing the number of activities that include phonics and reading in your provision can be really helpful. All of Phonics Shed’s lesson plans include suggestions for other classroom areas, designed to help incorporate phonics into other areas of your classroom.  

Online Games 

Online games are good for practice and consolidation. Phonics Shed includes online digital games for every GPC. These include games that focus on sound work, sounding out, sound matching, segmenting and blending. There are three different levels, so children can choose to play on ‘easy’, ‘medium’ or ‘hard’. These games can be assigned to pupils to play in class or at home.  

Common Problems 

Here are some common problems that can occur during the phonics screening check and how to avoid them.  

Easily Confused Graphemes 

Children can often confuse GPCs. This often occurs because there is a GPC focused on in each lesson, so the child can seem to be successful with the sound during the lesson but then can confuse it with similar-looking GPCs when reading. This is often amplified in the phonics screening check.  

The best way to address this is to directly work with identifying the differences between two similar-looking graphemes and work with words that have them in.  

The example above shows an activity where children are looking at and comparing the graphemes /ai/ and /oi/. 

Building Independence 

It is important that as teachers, we build independence in learners. Often during teaching, we give children instant feedback by praising or rewarding them.  

When children read a sentence or a book, successful decoding rewards them with a sentence that makes sense when they reach the end. It means comprehension can happen. Isolated words, like the ones used in the phonics screening check, do not offer this, especially pseudo-words. In this situation, it is common for children to read a word, then look to the adult to see if they got it correct. As educators, we often will try to reassure children and it can feel unnatural not to do this. However, during the phonics screening check, this is not allowed and it can make children nervous. Therefore, it is important to work on building children’s independence by including more opportunities for children to read, check and self-correct without constant prompts.  

This is purposefully built into Phonics Shed lessons, as the learning is scaffolded so reading can be completed as a whole group so children understand the idea of the task, then there is a similar task that can be completed in pairs and there are independent tasks too. This ensures that children are not relying on constant reassurance or prompts from adults. Paired work also reduces imitation that can happen in whole group situations. 

Forgetting to Blend 

One of the most common mistakes that children make during the phonics screening check is saying the sounds aloud but forgetting to blend them. The adult is not allowed to prompt children during the check. If we encourage children to practise blending automatically after they have sounded a word out, then this is much less likely to occur. 

Close Graphemes 

Try to include as many close graphemes as possible so children are paying attention to the letters in the graphemes. The example above includes the words ‘first’, ‘sprint’ and ‘string’. Children will have to pay careful attention to the letters to sound the words out correctly.  

Making Pseudo-Words Real 

Children often will try and make pseudo-words real words during the check. Practise the concept of pseudo-words and keep reminding children that if they see the alien image next to a word, then it is not a word that has meaning in English. Make sure you don’t keep repeating the same pseudo-words as this will have an impact on them trying to read the words by sight. The key is for children to focus on decoding and not speed.  

Additional Information 

Braille versions of the phonics screening check can be ordered, but this needs to be done by the date specified in the administration guidance. Alternative versions of the check are downloadable; this includes word versions, with/without images and colour or black and white. Children with a hearing impairment can use cued speech if it is familiar to them and speech difficulties and accents can be considered. However, it is important to note that these things must be normal classroom practice for the pupil.  

Children can put sound buttons on the words themselves, but the educator cannot. The child may also use actions to support them, but this cannot be used instead of them saying the GPC or word.  

Video Webinar Recording: Statutory Assessment Series: Predictions and Preparation for the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check 

Watch this free webinar recording for all of the above.