High-profile study of government-backed phonics programme is to be published three-and-a-half years late, while another is abandoned after four years. What is going on?

The much-delayed publication of one of the most politically significant studies ever to be carried out for the Education Endowment Foundation has been criticised as “extraordinary” by an educationist who has been investigating the saga.

A high-profile investigation into the phonics teaching programmes of Ruth Miskin, a key government adviser, has been subject to at least four hold-ups, with the results now due to be published some three-and-a-half years late, and more than six years after the study began.

A second research project on Ms Miskin’s Read Write Inc programme was abandoned in its substantive form in April, more than four years after it began.

Now an investigation by this website has seen the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) seemingly changing its story about the delays several times and apparently failing to be fully open about the saga even when pressed. The EEF has said it is independent of government. But the developments seem to raise questions about why such significant work, of interest to the thousands of schools now using Read Write Inc and costing more than £1 million, has taken so long to release.

The EEF was described, in the schools white paper published in March, as “world class,” as the government set out plans to hand it at least another £100 million to continue its work. But the investigation raises questions about why such important research has been subject to so many strange twists and turns, with full and upfront explanations seemingly hard to come by.

The detail: multiple changes of publication date