A screening result indicates that further investigation is justified; it does not show which phonological or code knowledge is insecure. A detailed assessment should change the teaching decision.

Screening and detailed assessment are different

A screening check samples performance and identifies who may need a closer look. A detailed assessment examines the errors and component skills in enough detail to decide what to teach.

Assess:

• phoneme identification, blending and segmenting;

• knowledge of sound-letter correspondences;

• reading of unfamiliar regular words and nonwords;

• spelling from dictated sounds and words;

• accuracy and strategy in connected text;

• whether the same gaps appear across reading and spelling.

For older pupils, use age-respectful materials and add polysyllabic words, syllable boundaries and morphology where relevant.

Ask the pupil what they do when they meet a word they don't know. If they guess from the first letter or skip it, include practice in working through the whole word.

Analyse the errors

Record the exact response, not simply correct or incorrect. Look for patterns: omitted sounds, weak blending, confusion between particular correspondences, guessing from first letters, difficulty with vowel patterns or loss of accuracy in longer words. For example, a pupil who reads “strap” as “stap” and spells “stamp” as “samp” knows single sounds but drops adjacent consonants, so teaching starts there.

Use the pattern to set the entry point, group pupils only where they share the same starting point and choose intensity. Pupils with the same total score may require different teaching.

Assessment routes

• Free initial route: use current reading and spelling samples, a teacher-led code-knowledge check and DfE phonics screening materials. These can expose errors but are screening materials, not a complete assessment battery.

• PhAB2 Primary (paid): a standardised one-to-one assessment for ages 5–11 covering several phonological processes. Check current qualification, administration and scoring requirements.

• PhAB for older pupils: the same GL Assessment page describes the original PhAB (paid), which covers ages 6 to 14. Confirm the current edition and norms before purchase.

• Fresh Start assessment and placement (paid): useful when considering that provider’s programme, but a provider placement assessment should not be treated as a neutral assessment of every possible literacy need.

• CTOPP-2 (paid): a specialist measure of phonological processing for ages 4 to 24. It uses US norms. Check practitioner qualification, normative relevance and whether it answers the referral question.

Decide the next action

Translate the findings into a teaching sequence, baseline and review measure. Reassess the taught skills and their transfer after an agreed period. Seek specialist advice when the pattern is complex, progress remains limited despite well-delivered provision, or the assessment required sits beyond staff competence. Avoid changing programmes repeatedly without understanding the error pattern.

No single phonics or phonological assessment explains a pupil's difficulty on its own.

Talamo has no commercial relationship with any of the organisations named here. We suggest them only because we think they could be useful to schools.