Sue Lloyd

Lloyd was a primary school teacher in Lowestoft who grew frustrated with how reading was being taught and worked out a synthetic phonics method, teaching forty-two letter sounds with actions before moving on to whole words. Jolly Phonics came out of that, published from 1992 by Chris Jolly, and the workbooks and activity books are its classroom material. Synthetic phonics became the required approach in English primary schools after a government review in 2006, which turned her method into something close to a national standard. It has critics among teachers who argue it narrows early reading.