Tuesday, 18 June 2024

Literacy education

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (21:46): (952) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Deputy Premier in his capacity as Minister for Education, and the action that I am seeking is that the minister update the house on the new Victorian teaching and learning model, which he announced last week, particularly introducing a systematic synthetic phonics approach as part of prep to grade 2 student reading programs. As part of the Legal and Social Issues Committee last week we wrapped up our hearings into our inquiry into Victoria’s state education system, and in doing so we heard from a number of experts in the field, including Dr Jordana Hunter from the Grattan Institute and Dr Greg Ashman, who told us about the benefits that the teaching of phonics can have for students in those prep and year 1 levels.

Over the weekend as well I had the opportunity to catch up with a good friend of mine who is a teacher at one of our many wonderful public high schools. He actually is an English teacher and a literacy leader, and he told me as well of the benefits that they see at the high school level. Taking in students from a number of different local primary schools, they see the difference in approaches, and in those schools that do already teach phonics they are already seeing some really optimistic and encouraging results. We know that from overseas examples as well, whether it be in the UK, where phonics was adopted as an approach 12 years ago – and I will admit it is one of the very few examples of a positive policy outcome from what has been a rather shambolic Tory government over in the UK. May I take this opportunity to wish Keir Starmer and his team all the best in just a couple of weeks – absolutely throw the Tories out. But one of the few good examples has been the smooth implementation of the phonics program, and we have also indeed seen from the evidence last week in the committee that even the US state of Mississippi is getting some extremely good results as a result of its implementation of the phonics approach.

This is a government that has consistently put Victorian students first. We see that through our building of 100 new schools which will be built by the year 2026, with a number of them currently under construction in my electorate. We are investing to make Victoria the Education State. This is a very exciting measure which has been announced by the education minister, which is going to advance that and improve the literacy of our youngest Victorians with an evidence-based approach. So the action that I am seeking is for the minister to update the house on the Victorian teaching and learning model, which he announced the updates to last week, particularly with regard to systematic synthetic phonics.