As reported below, Sir Jim did not receive my submission to his review on dyslexia. He has now sent me this response (this is the complete text of his email).
John
I may well have seen your first submission but cannot now recall the precise points you made. On the Dyslexia Review, I was correct in saying that I had not seen your submission. I have now spoken with (civil servant) and we think that it may have been lost in transit to the researcher who was not based in the Department. Obviously, I very much regret whatever caused the omission.
On the important point about the teaching of regular and irregular patterns, I certainly agree that the latter should be carefully taught but I remain convinced that children should meet with early success in decoding and encoding, which the introduction of regular patterns secures. That was all too evident in what we saw in the case of well-taught Jolly Phonics, and in the Clackmannanshire programme where the s/a/t/p/i/n starter was invariably successful in switching children (and teachers) on to phonics - simple but effective.
As you know, Ruth Miskin's Programme is similarly structured but with a different set of starter letters. I have long supported Ruth Miskin's work. I invited Ruth to run the phonics training of all the National Strategy Literacy Consultants, which she did with consumate knowledge and skill. Her trainers also featured in the training video which was widely distributed to primary schools. Far from being tangential, her work has been central to raising awareness of the importance of securing high quality teaching of phonics. I suspect Ruth would agree, that much of this has been a needlessly acrimonious battle at times and one that has yet to won.
Best wishes,
Jim
So, Sir Jim accepts that irregular patterns in English need to be carefully taught. This point is not made in his reports, and is a new development. From all of my experience, it is, alongside phonics, the key to teaching people to read in English, and the answer to those who would argue, as Michael Rosen has, that those of us who see phonics as the basis of learning to read in English are presenting a distorted view of the language.
It is a pity indeed that the evidence I sent to his review did not reach him, and that tens of millions of pounds have been spent on mis-training teachers on the basis of evidence that was incomplete at best, and, at worst, deliberately distorted by people who wanted their own view to prevail.