Year 1 phonics screening check: what parents need to know

What the check is

Every June, children in Year 1 in England take the phonics screening check. It is a statutory check, which means state schools must run it, and it has been part of Year 1 since 2012.

Its purpose is narrow. The check finds out whether a child can decode: look at a written word, say the sounds the letters make, and blend them into a word. It does not measure intelligence, vocabulary, whether your child enjoys books, or how well they understand a story. A confident reader who has learnt lots of words by sight can still be caught out by it, because reading unfamiliar words is exactly what it tests.

It is not an exam either. Children are not graded or ranked, and the result does not follow your child into later years. The school uses the result to see who needs a little more phonics teaching, and the government uses the national figures to see how well phonics is being taught.

The 2027 check date

The check always happens in June, in a week set by the Department for Education. For 2027, schools must run it in the week beginning Monday 14 June 2027. Your school chooses the day and time within that week, and most do it quietly during normal lessons without telling the children it is anything special.

If your child is away that week, the school can usually do the check during the following week. The date moves each year, so if you are reading this later, the GOV.UK page called “Primary assessments: future dates” always has the current one.

What happens on the day

The check is done one-to-one, by a teacher or teaching assistant your child already knows, in a quiet room or a corner of the classroom. It is not timed. Most children finish in a few minutes.

The adult shows the child a few practice words first, so they know what to do. Then they turn the pages of a booklet and your child reads the 40 words aloud, one at a time. The words are printed in a large, clear font, with only a handful of words on each page.

The adult will not say whether each word is right or wrong, and will not help with sounding out. That can feel odd to a six-year-old who is used to encouragement, so it helps to say in advance: “The teacher has to stay quiet for this one. Just have a go at each word and move on.” Children are allowed to sound out aloud before they blend the word, and they can have a short rest if they need one.

Can my child fail?

The word “fail” is not used, and it is worth avoiding at home too. A child either meets the expected standard or does not yet meet it. In recent years about four in five children have met the standard in Year 1 (the Department for Education publishes the figures each autumn), and most of the rest meet it in Year 2.

The 40 words

The check contains 40 words split into two sections of 20. Half are real words and half are pseudo-words, which most schools and children call alien words.

Real words

The 20 real words are ordinary words a Year 1 child could reasonably read, such as “spoon” or “chip”. They are chosen for their spelling patterns, not because children are expected to know them by sight.

Alien words

The 20 alien words are made up. They follow the normal rules of English spelling, so they can be sounded out, but nobody has ever seen them before. That is the point: a child cannot have memorised “blorn”, so reading it correctly shows they can decode. Each alien word is printed next to a small picture of an imaginary creature. The picture is not a clue to the word. It is simply a signal that says “this is not a real word, so do not try to turn it into one”.

Some children see an alien word, decide it is silly, and try to change it into a real word they know, reading “strom” as “storm”. Practising with alien words at home is the best cure for this.

Section 1 and section 2

Section 1 is the easier half. It has 12 alien words followed by 8 real words, all with simple structures: three- or four-letter words using the most common letter sounds, and some with two consonants together, like “tr” or “mp”.

Section 2 is harder. It has 8 alien words followed by 12 real words, and they use trickier patterns: words with two syllables, split digraphs such as the a-e in “cake”, less common spellings of familiar sounds, and clusters of consonants at both ends of a word. The alien words in section 2 are the part children find hardest, because they combine an unfamiliar word with a trickier pattern.

How the words are marked

The adult records each word the child reads correctly. A word only counts if it is blended into a whole word; saying the separate sounds without putting them together is not enough, although children are welcome to sound out first. For alien words, any pronunciation that follows a genuine English spelling pattern is accepted, so “ow” can be said as in “cow” or as in “snow” and both are right. A child can also self-correct: if they read a word wrongly and then fix it, the corrected reading counts.

The pass mark and your child’s result

There is no fixed pass mark printed in advance. Each year, after the check has been taken, the Department for Education publishes the mark a child needed to meet the expected standard. In every year the check ran from 2012 to 2025 that mark was 32 out of 40; there was no June check in 2020 or 2021. In 2026 it was 31. Schools then record each child as having met the standard or not.

Schools must report your child’s score to you by the end of the summer term, together with whether they met the expected standard. Some schools include it in the end-of-year report; others send a separate letter. Individual scores are not published anywhere and are not shared with other parents.

If your child does not meet the standard

If your child does not reach the mark in Year 1, two things happen. The school gives extra phonics support during Year 2, usually in a small group, and your child takes the check again in June of Year 2.

Try to see this as useful information rather than a verdict. The most common reasons a child misses the mark are ordinary ones: they are still a little slow at blending, they find words with two consonants together difficult, they have not yet learnt the less common spellings of some sounds, or they were simply tired or shy on the day. All of these respond well to short, regular practice, and most children who retake the check in Year 2 meet the standard.

Helping at home

Most of the work for the check is done in school. What helps at home is short practice the child enjoys, with an adult who keeps their own worries about it to themselves. Everything below takes about five minutes.

Little and often

Five minutes a day beats an hour on Sunday. Pick a regular moment, such as after breakfast or while the bath runs, and keep it short enough that your child wants more. Stop before they get tired, and stop straight away if they get upset.

Sound buttons and phoneme frames

Sound buttons are the little dots and dashes written under a word: a dot under a single letter sound, and a dash under two or three letters that make one sound, like “sh” or “igh”. Pressing each button with a finger and saying the sound, then sweeping a finger along the whole word to blend it, is the routine most schools teach. Phoneme frames are rows of boxes with one sound in each, so a child can see how many sounds a word has. Our phonics screening check practice pack has pages of both, laid out in the same style as the real check.

Make alien words a game

Children love inventing creatures. Draw an alien together, give it a made-up name, and take turns reading and writing alien words for it. Put a dozen alien-word cards in a jar and pull one out at random each day. The sillier the better: a child who has named a dozen aliens is not thrown by a strange word in June.

Keep reading real books

Decoding practice is not a substitute for stories. Keep sharing books every day, let your child hear you read with expression, and let them read a page to you when they want to. Reading books that match the sounds they know builds fluency, and fluency is what makes the check feel easy.

What to avoid

Do not encourage guessing from the first letter or from a picture. The check has no picture clues, and guessing is the habit that trips children up. Do not drill the full 40-word format night after night; two or three complete practice runs in the weeks before the check is plenty. And try not to use the word “test” at home. “Sound check” or “reading game” is closer to how it feels in the room.

Which sounds to practise

Schools follow different phonics programmes and introduce sounds in slightly different orders, so ask the class teacher which sounds your child has been taught recently. The check uses the sounds children are taught in Reception and Year 1. Broadly, that means:

• All the single letter sounds, and the common two-letter consonant sounds: sh, ch, th, ng, ck, ff, ll, ss, zz and qu.
• The common vowel digraphs and trigraphs: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air and er.
• The alternative spellings usually taught in Year 1: ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, wh, ph, ew, oe and au, plus the split digraphs a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e and u-e.
• Words with two consonants together at the start or end, such as bl, cr, st, mp, nd and nk, which children often find harder than a new digraph.

Some years the check leans on the earlier, more familiar sounds; other years it uses more of the Year 1 alternatives. Practising a balance is the safest plan.

Children with SEND or English as an additional language

Most children with special educational needs take the check in the normal way, sometimes with access arrangements such as larger print, a coloured overlay, or more breaks. The headteacher can decide that a child should not take the check if they have not yet started to learn letter sounds, if they are unable to speak, or in a few other specific situations. If your child has an education, health and care plan or is on the school’s SEND register, talk to the class teacher or the SENCO early in the spring term about what will happen.

Children who are learning English as an additional language take the check like everyone else, and many do very well, because decoding relies on sounds rather than vocabulary. A child who has arrived in England very recently and has little English may be exempted by the headteacher.

A six-week plan

If you want a simple structure for the run-up to June, this works for most families. Every session is five to ten minutes, and it is fine to skip days.

Week	Focus	What to do
1	Single sounds and simple words	Sound buttons on three- and four-letter words. Read a short phonics book together.
2	Common digraphs	Practise sh, ch, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa and oo. Make five alien words with them.
3	Two consonants together	Words such as frog, jump and stamp. Sound out, then blend.
4	Alternative spellings	ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, wh, ph and ew. Alien-word cards from a jar.
5	Split digraphs and two-syllable words	Words like cake, bike, hope, rescue and sunset. One full practice check, for fun.
6	Mixed practice and rest	One more practice check early in the week, then just enjoy books.

Free official materials

Each year, once the check is over, the Department for Education publishes that year’s materials on GOV.UK: the pupil booklet, the answer sheet and the scoring guidance. They are free, and they are the best way to see exactly what the words and the creature pictures look like. Earlier years’ materials are there too.

What the official materials do not give you is a routine. The practice pack adds four fresh practice checks in the same format, sound-button and phoneme-frame pages, flashcards for the sounds that appear in the check, a tracker for the sounds your child is secure with, and a script for the adult so you know exactly what to say. If your child is moving into Year 2, our guide to Year 2 spelling words and rules picks up where phonics leaves off.