The Vale pupils celebrate stunning results as pupils excel in national assessments

We are celebrating outstanding results in this year's national phonics assessment, comfortably outperforming the national average.

 

Phonics is a method of teaching reading and writing by correlating spoken sounds with letters or groups of letters in the alphabet.

It teaches children to “decode” words by sounding them out rather than memorising them as a whole.

At The Vale, 87% of Year 1 pupils met the expected standard in the phonics screening check, 7% above the national average (2025).

The school also recorded a 10% improvement on last year’s results, reflecting the wider trend across GLF Schools, where the average phonics pass rate rose to 87.4%, up from 86.4% the previous year. 

Sarah Leyland and Cathy Browne, our Co-Headteachers, said: “We are incredibly proud of our pupils and staff for this fantastic improvement in phonics.

It reflects the hard work happening in every classroom and the real love of reading we are building across the school.”