Summiya Yasmeen interviewed Christopher Jolly, the London-based founder of Jolly Learning Pvt. Ltd (estb.1987) which has pioneered Jolly Phonics, a child-centred approach to teaching English through synthetic phonics, and Jolly Grammar. The company sells over 2 million publications each year in over 100 countries. Excerpts: What were the reasons which prompted you to promote Jolly Learning? Stagnation and low standards in the teaching of reading prompted me to start Jolly Learning, way back in 1987. While progress was being made in so many other walks of life, reading standards had not risen and indeed, had fallen. Meanwhile, some 20 percent of children and adults were failing to learn to read. I saw this as an opportunity for change and innovation. What are the major products and services offered by the company? Our major products and services are the Jolly Phonics (JP) and Jolly Grammar publications for teaching English to primary age children. We also have a smaller programme called Jolly Music which enables early understanding of music. How is the JP pedagogy different from others? Existing pedagogies are based on children merely memorising words. They are not given a skill which they can apply in each new situation. In practical terms, they aren’t able to read a word they haven’t seen before. By contrast with Jolly Phonics, they are taught the ‘code’ of reading. They start by learning the sounds of the language and how they are represented. They are taught to identify the sounds made by letters on the page, and then to blend those sounds to read the spoken word. This means they have the world of words and reading open to them, enabling them to readily read new stories. How satisfied are you with the growth, development and progress of Jolly Learning over the past three decades? By some yardsticks, the progress over the past 30 years has been stunning. Jolly Phonics doubles the speed at which children learn to read, and it is thoroughly enjoyed. This has given us a powerful base for developing usage. The Jolly Phonics way of learning English has been adopted by governments around the world — Trinidad, Nigeria, Oman and Fiji. Moreover, in cities worldwide from Accra and Cairo to Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur, children in private schools are learning to read the Jolly Phonics way. In the UK a decade ago, 68 percent of primary schools were using Jolly Phonics before the government finally relented and abandoned its previous policy of whole word learning, and embraced the phonics pedagogy. Now governments around the world include phonics and grammar in their primary school curriculums. Schools which teach reading and grammar the JP way, achieve excellent results. However, the results still have a modest impact on a national scale. On a global scale, far too many children still fail to learn to read. I believe the irregularity of English spelling is the elephant in the room which is being ignored, and is an impediment to higher literacy worldwide. The evidence that irrational…
