Why is it no longer in Phase 4 where we learn about adjacent consonants?

Children do learn to blend and read words with adjacent consonants in Phase 4.

The digraph ‘nk’, taught at the end of Phase 2 is actually ‘ng-k’, a bit like ‘qu’ /k-w/ – it is a digraph that makes two sounds! We have moved it to Phase 2 alongside ‘ng’ for two reasons:

When ‘n’ and ‘k’ are together, it is the only time that ‘n’ makes the sound /ng/. As this is the case, it is good to build on the teaching of the digraph ‘ng’ /ng/ and make the connection between these two GPCs. The children also learn the other common consonant digraphs ‘qu’, ‘sh’, ‘th’ and ‘ch’ at the same time – this means they are learning about the same type of alphabetic knowledge.

By learning to read ‘nk’ early on, we are helping children read many common words: ‘pink’, ‘thank’, ‘sink’, ‘wink’ etc. The biggest benefit is that they can read these words by Christmas rather than waiting until the summer term, which of course means they are making great progress and embedding these useful words into their orthographic store earlier than before.