Reception doesn't teach this.

By the time your child starts Reception, they're straight into Phase 2: letter sounds, blending those sounds to read words, and segmenting them to spell. And let me tell you, they hit the ground running. I taught Reception for over a decade, and phonics was the toughest lesson to teach every single year.

Phase 1 is the stage before that. It's where children actually learn how to hear, blend, and segment sounds. It happens in nursery, if it happens at all. Once Reception starts, there's no time to go back and cover it.

And that's not down to nursery staff...

Phase 1 training isn't a guaranteed part of early years qualifications. It's something individual nurseries choose to invest in as additional CPD, so how much Phase 1 work your child does before Reception can vary a lot from setting to setting.

Brilliant, dedicated staff are working with whatever training they've been given access to.

It just means you can't assume it's happening, or happening consistently, simply because your child is in nursery.

Here's why that matters.

• Phase 1 is where children learn the skill of blending and segmenting.
• Phase 2 is where they apply that skill to letters.

If a child reaches Phase 2 without that skill already in place, they're learning it from scratch at the same time as learning what every letter sounds like. Two new things at once, under time pressure, in a classroom of 30. That's one of the most common reasons children get stuck on blending early on.

I saw this every single year I taught.

In every class, there'd be a group of children (not including my little beauties with SEND) who simply weren't ready to learn letter sounds yet, because the foundations weren't there.

They needed to go back to Phase 1 before any of Phase 2 would stick. Once they'd had that intervention, letters started to make sense.

Of everything in early literacy, this is the stage that matters most. It's the one everything else is built on top of.

Why most parents end up skipping it

Not on purpose.

They've bought the phonics activity books, the letter sound puzzles, the flashcards, because that's what's actually available to buy (the clock app shop, I'm looking at you 👀).

And I get it...

Learning to recognise a letter and its sound feels like progress. It's tangible, measurable, and familiar.

When you picture your child learning to read, you picture them learning letters.

But none of that means much if the foundation isn't there yet.

A child can learn every letter sound and still struggle to blend them into a word.

Phonics (phase 2 and up) is where children apply and consolidate blending. Phase 1 is where they learn how to do it in the first place.

There's never been a version of Phase 1 made for parents to do at home.

Before Phonics is the missing piece.