Aus: 'Read the room: It's time to act on our children's literacy'

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Aus: 'Read the room: It's time to act on our children's literacy'

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Melbourne City councillor, Roshena Campbell, writes an opinion piece for The Sydney Morning Herald:
Read the room: It's time to act on our children's literacy

September 5, 2022
https://www.smh.com.au/education/read-t ... 5bf7w.html
As parents around Australia pat themselves on the back for getting through another year’s Book Week, it turns out we don’t have much reason to feel smug.

In looking at the nation’s winners and losers from the jobs summit, footnoted in the latter column are our kids and their literacy.

When employer groups and the ACTU came together pre-summit to nut out their common principles, one thing they agreed on was the lack of “foundational skills” in this nation. This was their polite of way of saying a disturbingly high number of Australians can neither read nor do basic arithmetic.

If that’s the case, it’s going to take more than free TAFE courses to fix the skills deficit.

But surely our literacy rates can’t be that bad?

We’re a developed nation with an advanced economy after all. Well they are. And getting steadily worse.
Clearly for many kids by the time they finish high school it’s too late to remedy literacy.

But what on earth is going on at primary school?

Australian schools are run by state and territory governments and they’re divided on how to best teach kids to read.

In one camp you have phonics advocates who believe phonics is king and your kids should learn by mastering letter-sound combinations, the way most of us were taught who finished primary school last century.

The other camp backs the balanced literacy approach, whereby children learn to read by, among other things, looking at accompanying pictures to see what word would make sense.

Since the 1990s the balanced literacy school has been in the ascendancy.

But in the past decade in NSW, the phonics advocates have struck back after research by the state’s Department of Education found balanced literacy to be less effective.

Just as important as the way reading is taught is making sure we know how kids are going through testing so those who are struggling can be given early intervention.

NSW deserves praise here, even if its statewide phonics test this year found 40 per cent of its year 1 pupils did not read as well as they should.

Phonics isn’t yet front and centre in Victorian state schools where balanced literacy still holds sway, but that may change later this year after the government holds its own year 1 phonics test.

Both states trail South Australia, which started phonics testing in 2018 and saw students meeting the benchmark grow from 43 per cent to 67 per cent last year.

Whether you learn to read proficiently shouldn’t be a state postcode lottery.
Do read the full piece - it's not long.

Some schools have made great advances in their reading instruction in Australia but it's no less than a travesty that this does not apply to all schools - and research informed teacher training in all universities.

Please bear in mind the national inquiry into reading instruction in Australia, that supported the inquiry in England, is dated 2005! Why is it taking such a long time to get universally well-trained teachers in any of the mainly English-speaking countries and wherever English is taught for foundational knowledge and skills (reading and spelling)?

Further, the example of rolling out a statutory national infant phonics check was in 2012 in England - a decade ago (thanks to Nick Gibb who was a minister at that time). There is no way that the implementation of a national phonics check should have been avoided in countries like Australia, America, Canada, New Zealand - and other English-speaking countries. It's such an important national snapshot that informs everyone, including teachers themselves, about the effectiveness of their teaching compared to like-schools and to reflect on year-on-year results. This is the most important steer that the teaching profession should truly appreciate and value - rather than resist!
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