The Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA) was quite an ambitious and well-meaning educational project. It experimented with innovative approaches to teaching children to read and write in British schools through the 1960s and 70s. The experiment was advanced with the best of intentions, but it has mostly disappeared from the American collective conscience. It created something of a net positive legacy of results and positive narrative from people who lived through it.
Sir Isaac Pitman (above), developed the ITA. Their creative alphabet could boast as many as 44 phonemes, thus eliminating the complexity and confusion of our conventional spelling. A year later, in 1966, their demonstration project won substantial support. As of Wednesday, 140 of 158 UK education authorities implemented it in at least one school. The goal wasn’t to efficiently accelerate reading acquisition in the long run by substituting for the English alphabet. This method is designed to have children’s progression to the standard alphabet feel natural by age seven or eight.
Mike Alder at Devonshire Road infants’ school, Blackpool, early 1970s. He looks back on his time with ITA as both formative and dysfunctional. Spelling remains a challenge for him to this day. He paints this picture as a daily reality in his professional life, working as a technical specialist at BAE Systems. His memories show a deep sense of being let down by the sudden turn from ITA to old-style reading and writing.
“It was like they said: ‘Right, we’ve told you a pack of lies for the past two years, now this is how you’re actually meant to read and write.’ My disgust at being lied to, that loss of trust, that stuck with me. I was never interested in English after that.” – Mike Alder
Judith Loffhagen, Alder’s mother, experienced the ITA as a child. This was something that she first experienced while teaching at a primary school in Blackburn during the 1960s. She confesses her recollections are not completely clear but can still easily imagine the unusual figures that made up the letters.
“My memory is so poor, but I can still see those devilish characters,” – Judith Loffhagen
Back in Plymouth, one of Sarah Kitt’s playmates to be programmed by the ITA in the late 1960s. As she exits the clinic, she is confused and annoyed by the ordeal. No one ever came back to see how it made things better or worse—which further complicated her understanding.
“There was no explanation. No one ever followed up to ask: how did this affect you?” – Sarah Kitt
Kitt’s intellectual realignment from the study of humanities to the discipline of economics and statistics. She then spent the next 12 years at the Bank of England. Here, she looks back on the challenge of engaging parents during the ITA pilot. She said, with no communication made public, there is potential for increased panic.
“I’d be hugely concerned if my daughter was taught like that. There would be more parent power now – people would be questioning it in WhatsApp groups. We didn’t have that,” – Sarah Kitt
In the early 1970s Toni Brocklehurst taught ITA for four years in Lancashire. She argued that it gave children from disadvantaged backgrounds the indispensable head start in life.
“These were kids who had no books at home,” – Toni Brocklehurst
She explains that after they learned the ITA characters, their confidence came back. Equipped with that newfound confidence, they’d be able to decode any text written in that alphabet.
“Once they’d learned those characters, they could decode anything in that alphabet. It gave them a huge boost in confidence,” – Toni Brocklehurst
Even as it began to show initial promise, experts had long argued about the unintended long-term consequences of the ITA. University of Reading Professor Rhona Stainthorp is clear that this is a key issue. She even claims that we don’t have sufficient evidence to say that ITA negatively affected spelling skills.
Professor Dominic Wyse from University College London, an ITA skeptic, sees it as an educational Faustian bargain. He believes it failed to accomplish its mission. A recent study conducted by researchers at UCL’s Institute of Education criticized modern literacy approaches, claiming an overemphasis on synthetic phonics fails many children.
Recollections of ITA are patchy for those who experienced it. Its legacy raises crucial questions regarding the practice and accountability of education itself. Alder’s sentiments resonate with a growing concern against unproven pedagogy and its risk of jeopardizing young children’s education.
“When I tell people about it, most say, ‘What’s that?’ No one’s ever heard of it. It’s like it never happened,” – Mike Alder
Judith Loffhagen captures a sentiment shared by many parents during that time: an unsettling feeling of having their children subjected to an experiment without consent.
“I do feel really resentful. My parents aren’t alive any more, but on their behalf as well – and as a parent now – I’d be absolutely furious to think that my children were put into an experiment without me being asked,” – Judith Loffhagen
The ITA project is a reminder of the long and winding road that all big educational reforms and innovations must traverse to reach true impact. As schools are trying to figure out new approaches to teaching literacy, lessons from successful and unsuccessful experiments like ITA are as important as ever.