This article explores the underpinning assumptions about the changing definition and parameters of early reading that are contained in successive UK Departments for Education (DfE, DfES, DfEE) documentation since 1995 and in Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) reports and official blogs during the same period. It employs a chronological presentation of key phrases within policy documents and grey literature to identify and track the changing attitudes held by the writers of these documents regarding the skills deemed to be officially important in learning to read. The article acknowledges and explores the contested nature of the field. The exploration of these policy documents demonstrates that although UK National Curricula since 1995, including the current one, have consistently identified that skills of early reading are multifaceted, this contrasts strongly with policy, guidance and inspection frameworks in the same period, which have increasingly sat, and continue to sit, within a view of reading underpinned by rigid and narrow definitions of early reading in which phonics is pre-eminent.