Wednesday, 8 February 2023

Literacy education

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:41): (22) My adjournment matter today is for the Minister for Education in the other place. The action that I seek is for the government to commit all Victorian schools to consistently teaching and assessing reading using a proven phonics-based approach. Tom is a 15-year-old boy who attended a state school in the Eastern Victoria Region. Despite being unable to read or write, he had never been held down a single year at school. He could not spell his own name, and when he was asked to read the alphabet and describe the sounds that they represented he could not. Week after week he sat down with a volunteer who he met at a local youth group to learn how to decode the alphabet. After months of persevering, at 15 years old he began to read his first words. While at school he spent 2 hours a week with a counsellor working on strategies to build self-confidence, which he described as being particularly low due to his inability to read or write. The commitment and contribution from this volunteer and this counsellor and so many other wonderful volunteers across the state is so admirable, but Tom’s challenges with reading could have been avoided. What he needed more than anything was to be taught properly from an early age.

His story is not an isolated case. Data from the Centre for Independent Studies show that around four in ten 15-year-olds do not meet the national proficiency standard in reading. Around one in five boys in year 9 do not meet the national minimum standards in writing, and NAPLAN results show that a vast majority of students who fall behind the national minimum at an early age never go on to exceed that benchmark later in their schooling. The best social and economic leveller we have is to ensure that all of our precious children are able to read. When communities and families are in dysfunction, we always see a common denominator. When we fail on education, we fail the young people in our care. Too often there is a tragic spiral from poor schooling to poor social and economic life. The school-to-prison pipeline is real for those people that do not get a quality education.

The foundation of reading starts with decoding. Kids who can decode with phonics-based teaching quickly become fluent and accurate readers, but those who do not will struggle throughout their life. Education experts point out inequity at school can be turned around. While it is true that children start school with different vocabularies, we can give them the decoding skills to catch them up and to bridge that gap. Once you can decode, the English language is open to you. The United Nations sustainable development goal 4 says that children deserve access to a quality education. When can we say we are living up to that goal? To end, Tom was the first person in his family to receive a stable job, and he attributes that to the lifelong skills that he received from that volunteer who taught him the invaluable skills of reading and writing.