Jolly Phonics - History

History

Jolly Phonics is a commercial programme developed by UK primary/elementary teachers Sue Lloyd and Sara Wernham, and published by Jolly Learning Ltd.

Lloyd first developed the programme in order to support a small group of children in their school who were unable to progress in reading using the whole language ‘Look and Say’ approach popular in the 1970s. In 1977, as part of a research project these children were taught to listen carefully to the sounds in the words and identify them, while being taught the letter sounds separately. As a result, these students who were previously demonstrating difficulty in reading and writing had significant improvements in abilities. By the end of the year, their teachers’ believed these children were now a year ahead of where they would have been without the change in methods. This was confirmed by a standardized reading test.

After many years of teaching these methods, Sue Lloyd met Christopher Jolly (managing directory of Jolly Learning Ltd.) at a conference in 1989. After a few years of research and trials, Chris encouraged Lloyd and Wernham to compile The Phonics Handbook, which was published in 1992. Since then, the range of products has been developed, and Jolly Phonics has now been used in over 100 countries, with some countries such as Trinidad, The Gambia and the Seychelles adopting it as government policy.

Jolly Learning has also collaborated with NGOs and charities such as Absolute Return for Kids to deliver Jolly Phonics resources for literacy programmes carried out in government schools in India and Nigeria.