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I’m exploring the word-mapping inconsistencies presented to teachers. A common theme that became apparent after training more than ten thousand teachers in Australia was that they need guidance. I did not expect to find the same issue in England, where phonics is mandated; however, it is apparent that we are not giving teachers consistent messages here either.

And yet the Reading Framework states:

“This guidance explains why teachers themselves also need to understand the alphabetic code: evidence supports the key role of phonic knowledge and skills in early reading and spelling.”
(Department for Education, 2023)

Here is one I’d like to highlight.

In the 2021 Letters and Sounds: An example progression, the DfE includes:

/ʧ/
<tch> match
<ture> adventure

The DfE also states that the schwa is not included as a GPC because it can map to many different graphemes, and recommends that children first read the underlying vowel before adjusting to schwa in speech.

For example: schwa at the end of words: actor
i.e. <a> <c> <t> <or>

When a child identifies the phonemes in adventure when spelling /ədˈvɛnʧə/, there are seven phonemes:

/ə/ /d/ /v/ /ɛ/ /n/ /ʧ/ /ə/

A phoneme-to-grapheme (speech-to-print) mapping would therefore be:

<a> <d> <v> <e> <n> <t> <ure>

Why use <ture> as a grapheme for the two phonemes /ʧə/?

Especially as, within the same table, actor is treated as containing a schwa at the end rather than creating a grapheme that incorporates the schwa:

<a> <c> <t> <or>

So they are applying their own principle there of mapping phonemes to graphemes.

Why is the schwa-containing sequence <ture> in adventure treated as a grapheme for /ʧ/, while other schwa-containing endings are not? This seems confusing and at odds with its own guidance.

This matters because teachers are expected to teach children to identify phonemes and map them to graphemes. If the principles vary depending on the word, how are teachers expected to know when a schwa-containing letter sequence should be treated as a grapheme and when the schwa should be treated as a pronunciation adjustment?
 

For clarity around DfE expectations
 

The Reading Framework states:

“Understanding that the letters on the page represent the sounds in spoken words underpins successful word reading. Pupils’ knowledge of the English alphabetic code, how letters or groups of letters represent the sounds of the language, supports their reading and spelling.”
(Department for Education, 2023)
 

In reading, pupils are taught to decode by identifying graphemes in written words from left to right, saying the corresponding phonemes, and blending those phonemes to say the whole word (Department for Education, 2023, p. 47).

In spelling, pupils are taught to say a word clearly, segment it into phonemes, and select graphemes to represent each phoneme in writing (Department for Education, Writing Framework, 2025, p. 41).

Statutory spelling guidance further states that teachers should draw pupils’ attention to grapheme–phoneme correspondences that both do and do not fit with what has been taught so far (Department for Education, Spelling Framework, p. 75).

In this context, the alphabetic code refers to the system of correspondences between phonemes in spoken language and graphemes in written English. The Reading Framework further notes that:

“The number of graphemes in a word usually corresponds to the number of phonemes”
(Department for Education, 2023, p. 41)

I argue that while what is expected seems clear, when we dig deeper into the specifics of word mapping, things are not straightforward.

Perhaps it is time for greater clarity.