“It’s just about printing the list, getting children to copy them”: some teachers’ experiences of the Key Stage 2 national curriculum for spelling in English primary schools

Spelling is a fundamental skill in the process of writing. In the first two years of schooling in England, the government has mandated that primary-aged children are taught early spelling through systematic synthetic phonics before moving to a more general spelling curriculum aged seven. This paper explores how spelling teaching practice has developed in response to government policy in England (DfE, 2013) and questions whether current practice fits with theoretical and research evidence on the knowledge required for successful spelling and supports a systematic approach to spelling instruction. A focus group of four KS2 teachers then discussed how they taught spelling, making comparisons between phonics and spelling teaching in the context of a posited new spelling programme to guide instruction at KS2. A variety of approaches were described by the teachers, who often felt that despite children having good spelling test results, they struggled to apply the words they had learnt accurately into writing. Many teachers wanted to develop their practice, but spelling was often not seen as a priority and this led to a continuation of current practice. We argue that there are significant gaps and inconsistencies in the national curriculum guidance on the teaching of spelling, which in turn leads to a lack of teacher confidence in spelling tuition and non-optimal teaching strategies.