Every Victorian child will be screened for dyslexia and other learning difficulties when they start school under a new state government program.
Parents and disability advocates have welcomed the move, which will lead to more learning difficulties being detected earlier.
It follows concerns that too many children – particularly those with dyslexia or "the invisible disability" – have been slipping through the cracks.
State school teachers currently use an online tool to assess every prep's English skills – but, until now, the tool has not been specifically designed to identify students at risk of having learning difficulties.
Education Minister James Merlino said students achieved better outcomes when their learning difficulties were identified earlier and they received support.
"We examined the latest thinking and best practices from around the world to ensure our kids get access to the best assessment tools as possible as part of a screening process for learning difficulties and disorders," he said.
The revamped program, which fulfils a Labor election promise, will begin in government and non-government schools next year.
Learning difficulties can be treated. For those affecting reading and spelling, this might involve a phonics-based program (linking letters to speech sounds), letting children use technology such as voice-to-text software, and using forms of assessment that doesn't involve writing.
The Australian Council for Educational Research developed the changes, which will help teachers recognise handwriting difficulties and issues related to speech, articulation and auditory processing.
It is estimated that between 10 to 16 per cent of Australian students have a learning disability, which includes dyspraxia, dyscalculia and dyslexia, a common neurological disorder that affects the ability to read.
Georgia Roberton would have benefited from an early screening program.
She spent three years struggling to read and write at school before she was diagnosed with dyslexia at the end of grade 2.
"I remember getting really frustrated," the now 17-year-old said. "When the class was reading out loud, I'd get more and more freaked out as it got closer to my turn."
Her mum Melissa could not understand why her daughter could not retain simple words like "the", even though they appeared on every page.
"I knew she was a clever girl but the words didn't make sense to her. They were like black squiggles."
But a diagnosis at the end of grade 2 changed everything. "She realised she wasn't stupid and it wasn't through lack of trying," Melissa said.
Georgia received specialist tutoring to help her read and write and she is now a confident Year 12 student at Ashwood High School. She is playing a lead role in Victorian State Schools Spectacular production and loves animal studies and the arts.
"A lot of kids aren't diagnosed, which is really sad," she said.
Jason Henham, the president of dyslexia support organisation SPELD Victoria, welcomed the initiative and said screenings needed to be backed with better classroom support and teacher training.
"If a prep goes through school now and struggles with reading, the teachers don't have the information about what might be causing that struggle. This will provide an indicator of whether something like dyslexia is a contributor."
He said students with dyslexia were often told that they were not trying hard enough, and there was a misconception they had an intellectual disability.
"We see really smart kids, but because they have challenges reading they are bullied and called stupid," he said.
ACER chief executive Professor Geoff Masters said the changes would help teachers target their teaching more effectively by providing them with more evidence to identify potential learning difficulties.
"We know that students start school with very different levels of literacy knowledge and understanding," he said.
The Andrews government is reviewing its funding program for students with a disability and teachers must now engage in professional learning on disabilities as part of their registration.
IFERI committee member, Molly de Lemos, gave me permission to copy her thoughts (expressed to the DDOLL network) about the proposed screening in Victoria (I've highlighted one paragraph in particular in red because using England's Year One Phonics Screening Check internationally might be a 'wake-up call' to many teachers, educationalists, parents and policy-makers):
Like many others on the DDOLL network, I have major concerns about this proposed screening program. It seems to me that it will be a huge amount of time and effort, as well as money, and will achieve very little, if anything, as seems to have occurred in the case of the Best Start program in NSW.
I think that there are a number of questions that need to be raised.
First, exactly what skills will be assessed, how will they be assessed (online?), and what evidence do we have that the assessment will reliably identify students who have some kind of underlying neurological disorder, as distinct from those students who have poor language and related skills due to other factors (such as lack of exposure to a language-rich home background or a non-English-speaking home background etc.)
Second, there seems to be an assumption that only children with learning difficulties require a phonics-based program (linking letters to speech sounds) for learning to read. In fact, ALL children require a phonics-based program for learning to read. The major reason why so many children have difficulties in learning to read (15 to 20 or per cent?) is because of the ineffective approaches to the teaching of reading in most Victorian schools (learn the magic 100 words, and then take home predictable readers and use the pictures to guess what the words say). If we start by addressing the fundamental problem of the ineffective teaching of reading in our schools, the number of children presenting with reading difficulties will be considerably reduced (say from about 15 to 20 per cent to about 3 to 5 per cent, see AUSPELD Guide to Understanding Learning Difficulties).
Third, if 10 to 15 per cent of Victorian children are identified as having a learning disability, what resources will be made available to support such a large number of students? And what sort of funding will be provided to implement effective programs to support these students? If we do not have the teachers trained to teach reading effectively, either to whole class groups or to individual students, how can we possibly bring about any effective changes to the status quo? Particularly when the majority of teacher educators continue to support and promote the whole language approach to teaching of reading, and reject any approach which involves systematic and explicit teaching of phonics. These are the ‘experts’ whose views are influential in determining government policy on implementation of programs in the school system.
I think that change will only come about when we have a government that is strong enough to impose change on the educational establishment, as has happened in the UK with the mandating of phonics-based programs for the teaching of initial reading and the phonics check to monitor progress in the achievement of basic word recognition skills which are the essential prerequisite skills for effective reading.
And I think that the best way to bring about change is to demonstrate that the current approach to the teaching of reading is failing a high proportion of students. This could be done by collecting data on how Australian children are performing on the UK phonics test at both the end of the Prep/K year and at the end of Year 1, as compared with children in the UK. I think that the results of such a study could shock our governments into action, if what I have heard about some preliminary Australian results on the UK phonics test is true.
I don’t see a need for a mass screening test of Prep kids on entry to school.
I think that a program which involves effective teaching of reading, ongoing monitoring of children’s progress, and national or state testing at the end of Prep/K and Year 1 on something like the UK phonics test is the best way to go.
There will always be some children whose difficulties with language become evident at an early age.
Such children should be assessed as soon as their difficulties become evident, either at school or at preschool level, and appropriate support provided.
But there is no point in identifying them if there is no program available to support them.
Is the new Victorian learning difficulties screening assessment any good?
From the end of this year, all children starting school in this state will be screened for learning difficulties.
The Minister’s media release says, “…the improved process will be the first step in the early detection of learning difficulties, so that children could get the support they need sooner” and that the policy means “properly supporting students with additional learning needs so they get the opportunity at a great education.” (Does poor grammar in the Minister for Education’s media releases make you feel a bit despairing, too?)
Again, reference is made to developments in England (Alison refers to the 'UK' but actually it is England where systematic synthetic phonics is fully and officially promoted, not the whole of the UK. Indeed, IFERI committee member, Anne Glennie, is working hard to challenge the failure of the government in Scotland to promote systematic synthetic phonics despite the Clackmannanshire research in Scotland and despite the high literacy results in Dunbartonshire from the uptake of systematic synthetic phonics):
Screen-then-intervene or intervene-then-screen?
In the UK, all school beginners are supposed to get explicit, systematic synthetic phonics teaching from the first week of school, then they test to see who’s not catching on after a few months, and provide them with extra teaching.
Children start school with a vast range of language and (pre) literacy skills. Some of them don’t speak English. Some can’t say long sentences. Some aren’t read stories because their parents are illiterate. Others can already read and write at school entry, and engage you in complex, polysyllabic, vast-vocabulary conversation for hours. Lucky them.
In the UK, everyone’s taught how to sound out words and all the main spelling patterns, in small, fast steps. Yes, some children already know a lot about this, but it’s better for them to be given an opportunity to shine than go too fast for some children, leaving them behind and miserable.
Children’s learning of the things they have been taught is then assessed, using tests like the PERA. Children across the country must also do the Phonics Screening Check. Strugglers identified on these tests are referred for additional intervention.
The UK system seems a better way to minimise the singling-out of strugglers, but really I don’t mind which system we use, as long as we abandon our current wait-to-fail system.
