If your child's school uses Little Wandle and your niece's school uses Read Write Inc, family conversations about reading levels turn into a translation exercise. Both are DfE-validated systematic synthetic phonics programmes teaching the same 44 sounds of English — but they organise the journey completely differently, and neither publishes an official conversion chart to the other.
Little Wandle (the most-adopted revision of the government's old Letters and Sounds framework) talks in phases and sets: Phase 2 covers the first single letter sounds, Phase 3 introduces digraphs like sh and ay, Phase 4 tackles consonant clusters, and Phase 5 teaches the alternative spellings that make English English.
Read Write Inc talks in Speed Sounds sets and storybook colours: sounds come in Sets 1–3, and children practise in colour-banded storybooks — Ditty, then Green, Purple, Pink, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Grey. (Yes, RWI's Pink and Green colours land in a different order than book-band Pink and Green. We're sorry. Everyone is sorry.)
From published school correlation charts, the systems line up approximately like this:
| Little Wandle | Read Write Inc | Book band | Typical stage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase 2 | Ditty books | Pink | Reception autumn |
| Phase 3, sets 1–2 | Green storybooks | Red | Reception |
| Phase 4, set 1 | Purple storybooks | Yellow | end of Reception |
| Phase 4 set 2 / Phase 5 set 1 | Pink storybooks | Blue | Reception / Year 1 |
| Phase 5, sets 2–4 | Orange storybooks | Green | Year 1 |
| Phase 5, set 5 | Yellow storybooks | Orange | Year 1 |
| Phase 5 complete | Blue storybooks | Turquoise | end of Year 1 |
| Fluency / Phase 6 | Grey storybooks | Purple | Year 2 |
Treat every row as "approximately" — schools adapt both programmes, and the sound order differs even where the overall stage matches. A child switching schemes mid-stream will meet a few sounds twice and a few early; that's normal and resolves quickly.
Not the scheme — the match. Whichever programme your school uses, the home-reading rule is the same: books your child reads to you should be decodable at their current level (they should manage ~90%+ of words without help), while books you read to them can and should be anything at all. If school sends home the right books, your job is mostly done; if you're buying extras, match the phase or colour, not the age on the cover.
Compiled August 2026 from published school correlation charts. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised and Read Write Inc are trademarks of their owners; this independent guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by either. Not educational advice — your child's teacher knows best.