High-Utility Letters: Why You Should Teach S, A, T, P Before B, C, D

Most alphabet charts go A, B, C, D — but almost no structured phonics programme actually teaches letters in that order. Jolly Phonics starts with s, a, t, p, i, n. The UK government’s own “Letters and Sounds” framework starts with s, a, t, p, independently arriving at nearly the same set. See where it fits in our guide to teaching a child phonics — here’s the actual reasoning behind the order, not just what the order is.

Why not just start with A, B, C, D?

Because a beginner reader needs to build and blend real words almost immediately, and the first six letters of the alphabet don’t let them. With only a, b, c, d, e, f you can’t build “cat,” “sat,” “pin,” or “tan” — you’re stuck reciting letters with nothing to read yet. Letters chosen for high-frequency, high-blend-potential are the fix: start with the handful that combine into the most real words the fastest, and save strict alphabetical order for later, when it’s genuinely useful — for the alphabet song, dictionaries, and filing names.

What’s the actual reasoning behind S, A, T, P?

Two independently designed programmes converge on almost the same starting four letters. Jolly Phonics’ own teacher’s guide opens with s, a, t, p, i, n, “chosen for high word-blending potential.” The UK Department for Education’s Letters and Sounds framework opens its Phase 2 with s, a, t, p as Set 1 — a government body and a commercial programme, designed separately, landing on nearly the same four letters. That’s not a coincidence of branding; it’s the same underlying logic showing up twice.

Why are confusable letters like B and D kept apart?

This is deliberate, not incidental. Jolly Phonics places b and d two full groups apart in its sequence — never taught close together. Reading researcher Timothy Shanahan, a former member of the U.S. National Reading Panel, makes the same point independent of any single programme: “letters that are visually or phonemically similar need to be kept separated,” since teaching them side by side invites exactly the mix-ups a parent worries about. It’s a small design choice with an outsized effect on how confident early reading feels.

What does a real teaching sequence look like?

Does this mean my child skips the rest of the alphabet?

No — all 26 letters and their names still matter, for spelling, the alphabet song, and using a dictionary later. This is a sequence for decoding, not a shortcut around the alphabet. It’s also worth being honest about the limits of this claim: Shanahan is explicit that no single letter sequence has been proven scientifically superior to every other — the original National Reading Panel found roughly eighteen differently-sequenced phonics programmes all worked, as long as the teaching was systematic rather than incidental. The defensible claim isn’t “S-A-T-P is the one true order.” It’s narrower and still solid: front-loading high-frequency, blendable, non-confusable letters is sound design, and several independently-built programmes converge on it — while strict alphabetical order isn’t built for this job at all.

How does this change as my child gets older?

By age six or seven, most children have moved well past needing this sequencing — they’re decoding fluently enough that letter order stops mattering day to day. Starting structured and early does make a measurable difference, though: a major U.S. review of reading research found systematic phonics instruction produced meaningfully better results when it began early, in kindergarten or first grade, than when the same instruction started later. The sequence matters most in the first few months — after that, it’s exposure and practice doing the work.

“Parents worry they’ve done it wrong if their child already sings the alphabet song before we start. They haven’t — it’s actually the most common starting point I see in demo classes, and it’s completely recoverable. We just add a second column: the letter has a name, and separately, a job.” Monika Verma — Lead Trainer, LittleLearns

Quick answers

Every child develops at their own pace — see our learning-outcomes note. This sequence is a teaching approach we use in class, not the only order that works — every structured phonics programme gets children reading, just by a different path.