This month's report from The Grattan Institute (The Reading Guarantee) which explains that one in three Australian students are poor readers. But surely not in the ACT right? Wrong.
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The report states that: "Even in the ACT and Victoria, the most socio-economically advantaged jurisdictions, about 25 per cent of students are not proficient."
But as two Canberra parents with children that the ACT public school system has failed to teach to read, we don't need these reports to know about the problem in our schools.
We see the results every day in our own homes.
Even worse? Now that we know how literacy is being taught in ACT schools (using outdated, inefficient methods), we know nothing is going to improve unless the government accepts and acts on the widely available evidence that would turn these numbers around.
Contrary to the stereotypes, this is not just an issue impacting lower socioeconomic or disadvantaged families. However, unlike us (whose children both have university-educated, financially secure parents), the parents in those categories won't be in the position to fix their children's literacy issues.
That's because at the moment, the solution for struggling readers in the ACT is: "Get a tutor that follows the science of reading, stat."
Sue's son was in grade one when she realised he still didn't know more than a couple of letters of the alphabet. He couldn't sound out any letters and was showing no interest in reading, despite loving being read to.
In fact, he was now actively trying not to have to read. Sue did some research and realised the ultimate irony: she needed to pull her son out of school three times a week and pay $200 a week for literacy tutoring to ensure he would be taught to read.
Unlike Sue's son, Steph's son loved school. But when Steph got a message in year 1 stating the teacher was proud of a story he'd written, because he was "generally reluctant to put marks on the page", alarm bells rang. Here's the story the teacher was so proud of: "EPBPbxgbnop THo TBHoT Oo." Don't get it? Steph didn't either.
It's: "The big lion hopped on stilts to get the giraffe."
Steph's compliant child had no idea of where to start, so he just strung together a bunch of letters and wrote them down. And the well-meaning teacher, who has taught using old-fashioned methods, was happy and proud of him.
Cue a year of Steph meeting the teacher, the school psychologist, and trying to reconcile the school's advice with the child she knew: "Your son can read but he doesn't try."
We each know of dozens of other parents whose children are also struggling to learn to read in our schools ... Literacy specialists know how to fix this problem, and they've been sharing this information for years.
Luckily, Steph realised there was a bigger problem at play. She contacted Sue, who told her: "Get him a tutor, if you can get in. Figure out how to afford it. The school is not going to fix this, they're using old-school techniques that are going to make the problem worse."
Today, we each know of dozens of other parents whose children are also struggling to learn to read in our schools. Sadly, the advice we each give them is the still the same: in the ACT public school system as it stands today, if your child is having difficulty reading, school isn't the place to find solutions. What's so frustrating is that it could so easily be. Literacy specialists know how to fix this problem, and they've been sharing this information for years. It's called the "science of reading", and it's a systematic approach to literacy that includes using simple tools that will find the kids who are likely to struggle and implementing small group interventions to help these kids encode and decode words instead of guessing when they are stuck.
Despite recent claims on a recent ACT Public Schools Facebook post, our public schools don't follow a systematic, evidence-based approach to early literacy instruction. The Catholic schools do, but our public schools? Nope.
If the ACT government needs to know how to implement this solution, it can simply look up the recent The Grattan Institute report. Yes, we'd need four to six years and a commitment to funding, but if we implement a systematic, evidence-based approach rather than ignoring the problem or tinkering around the edges, we'd turn things around for generations of ACT children in future.
As for the inquiry, we hope its members realise that if there aren't many replies from parents, it's likely because they're busy working extra hours to pay for tutoring, doing catch up work with their children or are like Steph, trying to figure out how to ensure the time in school teaching outdated literacy techniques doesn't undo all that money.
We don't need a report to know ACT's reading problems
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28.02.2024
This month's report from The Grattan Institute (The Reading Guarantee) which explains that one in three Australian students are poor readers. But surely not in the ACT right? Wrong.
$0/
(min cost $0)
Login or signup to continue reading
The report states that: "Even in the ACT and Victoria, the most socio-economically advantaged jurisdictions, about 25 per cent of students are not proficient."
But as two Canberra parents with children that the ACT public school system has failed to teach to read, we don't need these reports to know about the problem in our schools.
We see the results every day in our own homes.
Even worse? Now that we know how literacy is being taught in ACT schools (using outdated, inefficient methods), we know nothing is going to improve unless the government accepts and acts on the widely available evidence that would turn these numbers around.
Contrary to the stereotypes, this is not just an issue impacting lower socioeconomic or disadvantaged families. However, unlike us (whose children both have university-educated, financially secure parents), the parents in those categories won't be in the position to fix their children's........
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