I was schooled in this time, at a primary school in central edinburgh which was said to be where Moray House did its experiments (-the Scottish teacher training

I was schooled in this time, at a primary school in central edinburgh which was said to be where Moray House did its experiments (-the Scottish teacher training college, which all state school teachers had to attend, to be qualified to work) and while I have dim memories of seeing the alternate spelling books around the place, luckily didn't get foisted onto them. Judging by the stuff people recall in this piece I dodged a bullet. The ITA ladybird books were also around in the shops. I had that one about the police but in real alphabet. Confusingly edinburgh had its own idiosyncratic police boxes more like Georgian temples. They all wound up being sold off as coffee stalls and bookshops. Scots coppers rarely wore the custodian helmet(maybe on duty at an old firm game) so the imagery didn't make much sense. The politics of phonics vs whole word leaked into Queensland (where I now reside) politics and continues. It's stupid, all aspects of language and literacy come to bear, demanding one technique over another or whacked ideas like ITA is politicising early childhood to no good effect.