How many syllables and phonemes are present in the word "thought"?

There is only one syllable in the word 'thought' but there are three phonemes, th, ough, and t. children are now taught phonemes at school but many, understandably, find it very difficult on meeting a new word to 'sound out' phonemes that then do not make a word sound they can recognise.

This is because of the irregularity of our language, unlike, say, Spanish, where sounding out phonemes would almost always result in the expected sound. Each of our phonemes holds a high risk of being portrayed differently in our spelling. Learning phonemes is very different for children learning than the seventies style of 'look and say' which relied on a child's visual memory for success.