I'm Laura. I trained as a primary teacher and taught for ten years before leaving the classroom to raise our two children. As a Key Stage 1 and Early Years teacher, phonics formed a significant part of my role. However, phonics was often an area of confusion for many parents, who felt less familiar with the jargon and phonetic language their children were using. This made them feel less confident supporting their children at home. I can recall many conversations with first-time parents asking me what a phoneme or digraph was and whether they were saying the sounds right, or whether practising at home might contradict the teaching in class. Because phonics underpins all areas of learning, many parents feel anxious about giving their child the best possible start in school, and about them falling behind in later years.
I can relate to this pressure with our youngest. Our eldest picked up phonics extremely well and seemingly effortlessly. However, our youngest, who has an August birthday, has had a different journey, and for a long time reading felt like a battle for him. He did not want to pick up a book or read aloud to me. The school was doing everything right, but at home we were guessing: which sounds did he actually know, and what should we practise? This inspired us to build the tool we wished we'd had: a short assessment that showed us exactly where he was, and a plan for what to do next. The first milestone for him was not a score from his assessment but a real leap in confidence. He was beginning to enjoy showing us what he could read, and was actually asking to do his reading, sometimes well after his bedtime. One evening he did not want to stop: 'just one more.' That is the moment Legible is built around.
My husband David built Legible with me. He leads the technical development and day-to-day operations, while I bring the pedagogical expertise and educational perspective, and a focus on whether each decision is genuinely useful for parents.
Laura
Who Legible is for
Parents of children aged four to eight in state-school settings in England.
The phonics assessment is permanently free. After the pilot we plan to charge a modest subscription for guided practice, so we never have to monetise children's attention to keep the app running. Families on free school meals or other means-tested support will have free or reduced access; we are working out the mechanics honestly and will publish them before we charge anyone.