Why do the flashcard packs for home and school differ in price?

The At Home cards are designed for use by parents with children who are learning phonics using the Little Wandle programme at school.

Reception cards:

There are two packs of At Home cards for Reception which cover Phases 2 and 3. They contain 43 cards in each pack and across the two packs there is coverage of 46 phonemes and graphemes. Each pack is priced at £6.99 inc. VAT (cards sold for the consumer market attract VAT).

The Reception pack for Schools covers Phases 2 and 3 together in one pack, includes 50 phonemes and graphemes on 48 cards and costs £16.99 ex VAT (schools do not need to pay VAT).

This means that to cover both Phases 2 and 3, the cost difference is £3 more for the school pack – with the pack for school use covering more content than the At Home packs combined.

Year 1 cards:

The At Home pack for Year 1 contains 49 cards featuring 30 Phase 5 graphemes plus 18 phonemes and graphemes from Phases 2 and 3 as it is designed to support children preparing for the phonics screening check. This pack costs £6.99 inc VAT.

The School pack for Year 1 contains 66 cards and covers Phase 5 in more depth, without any repetition of phonemes and graphemes from Phase 2 and 3 – meaning that the content of this pack is substantially different from the At Home pack for Year 1 and that is reflected in the price of £19.99 ex VAT.

The pricing is based on the following:

– The content is different, as described above.

– We price our resources to be appropriate for the market they are aimed at. There are a number of parent flashcards available for other phonics programmes which are around the £6.99 price point. If we want parents to be able to support phonics teaching at home we need the Little Wandle parent cards to be affordable for families and not more expensive than the equivalent At Home cards from other phonics programmes. Pricing differences between home and school resources are established for other areas of the curriculum – for example, SATs revision and practice books designed to be bought by parents have a lower price point than pupil books produced for use in school.

All of the Little Wandle resources for use in the classroom have been priced at a similar level to those from other programmes, and reflect the value of the content.