Phonics Check misses on sounds you haven't taught yet

Probably not a problem with your scope and sequence.

If the Year 1 papers came back with misses on code your class has not met yet, that is the instrument doing what it was built to do. The check samples the whole code ladder in one sitting. A scope and sequence spreads that same ladder across roughly two years, in its own order. So for many classes, part of the check sits ahead of where they are on check day, and that includes classes following the Commonwealth's own sequence.

What to do with the papers is a sorting job. Split the misses into code you have taught, which is your reteach list, and code you have not taught, which goes into your teaching plan with a date against it. Then read the score against that split rather than against a number on its own. For the reteach half in detail, here is which sounds to take first.

The check samples ten steps, your class is partway up

The check is mapped to the official Word and Code Complexity Continuum, ten steps running from CVC words out to multiple syllables:

1. CVC words
2. Simple words with adjacent consonants (3 to 4 phonemes)
3. Consonant digraphs
4. Split vowel digraphs
5. Complex words with adjacent consonants (5 to 6 phonemes)
6. Vowel digraphs
7. Trigraphs
8. Morphology
9. R-controlled vowels
10. Multiple syllables

Forty items across those ten steps. The Literacy Hub's own item table lists exactly which letter-sounds each word checks, and the spread is not gentle. R-controlled vowels turn up in six items, four of them in section 1, the simpler half of the check. Split vowel digraphs take four more. The last three items are multisyllabic. Worth knowing if you are holding an older word list: the items rotated in January 2024, so check yours against the current set.

Now put that next to the Literacy Hub phonics progression, the Commonwealth's own published sequence, 24 phases long. Five and six phoneme words with adjacent consonants start at Phase 14. R-controlled vowels arrive at Phase 15. Both sit at Phonic knowledge and word recognition level 6/7, well past the middle of the progression, and both are sampled by a check most schools sit in Year 1.

The Literacy Hub used to pin those phases to a year level and stopped. The May 2026 version removed year levels from the whole progression, "to allow for more flexible responsiveness to student data". So the Commonwealth's own position is that Phase 15 lands when your class gets there, not in a set term.

A school following that progression to the letter can still meet untaught code on check day. Much of that is the calendar, not your programme.

The department already tells you to split the misses

This is not a Phonicspal reading of the data. The official companion document says it plainly:

Any persistent errors may indicate the sounds in particular words have yet to be taught or they need review and consolidation.

Yet to be taught, or needs review. Two piles, in the department's own words.

The same document anchors the benchmark to teaching time rather than to a position in any sequence: the aim is a fluent decoder score "by the second half of Year 1, after 18 months of instruction". Two schools can be at that same 18-month mark, sitting on different steps of their own sequences, and both be exactly where they should be.

The group-report guide goes further. For your cohort's earliest point of need it tells you to "find where this word or code type is introduced in your phonics progression or the Literacy Hub phonics progression", then to "introduce or reintroduce" it. Introduce. The instrument's publisher takes it as read that some of what the check flagged was never taught.

Sorting the piles takes about twenty minutes

The department publishes the routine, and it runs on a printout and a highlighter:

1. Work out how many students make up 80 per cent of the group.
2. Print the continuum template.
3. In the reporting section of the platform, tick View distribution of answers by words.
4. Highlight green every word 80 per cent or more of the group read correctly.
5. Highlight orange every word more than 20 per cent got wrong or skipped.
6. Find the earliest category with more than two orange words. That is your group's earliest point of need.

Then run the item table's letter-sounds column against your own progression. Everything at or behind your current step is the real reteach list, and it is often short. Everything past it goes in the not-yet pile, with one check: find the term your sequence teaches it. If the answer is "sometime in Year 2" or nobody can find it at all, that is a coverage question to take to whoever owns the sequence, not something to wait out. For the handful who need it, that is a small-group dose of the lesson you already taught, not a separate programme.

Before you file a miss, make sure it is one

Some misses are not code gaps at all, and the scoring rules say so.

• Pseudo words accept any plausible pronunciation of a grapheme. Real words do not. A child who picks the wrong vowel sound for a real word has a different problem from one who does not know the grapheme.
• Accent and pronunciation difficulties are marked correct. A child who usually says fw for th has not missed the sound. (The Australian short a is a good example, covered in why the a in camp sounds different.)
• Sounding out without blending is scored Not yet. That is a blending problem, and reteaching the grapheme will not touch it.

The made-up words carry most of the diagnostic weight, because a real word can be recognised rather than decoded. That is the same logic behind what makes a question diagnostic. Watch for one pattern in particular. A child who gets complex real words right while missing simple pseudo words, or who reads a made-up word as a real one, is likely reading whole words instead of decoding. Worth catching early. That child needs blending and letter-sound work, not a step back down the ladder.

Another school's pass rate is not a programme comparison

Two staffrooms comparing cohort percentages are comparing two different points in two different sequences. They are also comparing two intakes, and that is the factor most often left out. South Australia in 2025, one check, one state:

A 44 point spread, and not one of those bars is about a scope and sequence. Across the border, New South Wales reported 64% of 61,964 Year 1 students at or above 28, with an average score of 28.5. South Australia reported 66%, median 32. Neither state mandates a single sequence, and the two results sit two points apart.

Our own programme data says the same thing from the other direction. Across the 19 Australian sequences we map, the first step containing an r-controlled vowel lands in Prep for eight of them and in Year 1 for the other 11. Same continuum step, a whole school year apart in the scheduling. The Literacy Hub progression says why outright: "there is not one universally agreed sequence for teaching sounds and letters."

What to change, and what to leave alone

Not the sequence. The official guidance on differentiation is that "children can all progress through the phonics sequence of content but the tasks they are given to consolidate their learning can differ in complexity". Keep the order, teach the taught-pile gaps in small group, vary the practice for the students in front of you, and make sure the not-yet pile has a term against it.

The thing worth changing is how the results get read next year. Sorted by sound and held against your own progression, a set of 40-word papers is a placement tool. Read as a single number beside another school's single number, it is noise with a decimal point.

Phonicspal works from the same split. It maps every word to its graphemes and sits on top of whatever sequence your school already runs, so every lesson, story and printable stays on the taught side of the line. You can see how the sequence mapping works.

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Figures above are published by the NSW Department of Education, the South Australian Department for Education and the Literacy Hub.