Focus on evidence-backed teaching methods needed: Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy

Professor Rauno Parrila, the inaugural director of the Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy, said recent data from Progress in International Reading Literacy Study shows many year four students were struggling to meet the reading benchmark.

"Australia has about 20 per cent of children that are struggling on that assessment, and that 20 per cent has stayed the same at least the last couple of rounds. So we haven't really reduced that number," Professor Parrilla said.

"The gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children have stayed the same, if not increased."

The new centre was set up by the Australian Catholic University in April to focus on improving literacy instruction.

"Our mission is that no child in Australia should leave school without having functional literacy skills," Professor Parrila said.

"It's not that every child has to be a super good reader and writer. That's not a realistic goal. But even if you want to be a tradie nowadays, you need to read a lot of relatively complex material."

The centre has recruited Professor Anne Castles as a laureate fellow and has started working on two new postgraduate units on early reading skills and fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension based on the latest evidence on the science of reading.

Professor Parrila said reading instruction methods based on the popular Reading Recovery program were proven to be ineffective.

"The evidence is overwhelming that it does not work," he said.

"In particular, the disadvantaged kids have been penalised by that more than anybody else.

"So if you want ... to lift a system up the best place to start is the poorest performers because they have the longest way to go."

Professor Parrila said the sense of urgency to improve literacy was missing in the ACT, despite underachievement compared to students with a similar background.

"When you compare to other jurisdictions that have a much bigger variety of learning environments, ACT is always going to do good whereas if you compare like to like, the ACT isn't doing that well, as far as I've understood."

The Education Directorate has promoted the 10 essential literacy practices from Christine Topfer in public schools.

Professor Parrila said these practices were research-based but more should be done to monitor students' progress.

"The real evidence is on how do you put it together and how do you deliver it in the classroom? Because you can put emphasis on one one side and not the other side.

"So really, what I would like to see is all school jurisdictions having a proper progress monitoring tools in place. Phonics check is a one-time tool in doing that."

Ideally, there would be an annual reading screening check from year one to year four to monitor a students' reading progress, as is being trialled in some parts of Canada, Professor Parrila said.

He said the Catalyst program undertaken by Catholic systemic schools in the Canberra Goulburn region appeared to be based on sound evidence, but more data would be needed to prove that it was working.

Catholic Education Canberra Goulburn director Ross Fox sits on the Australian Catholic University senate and has welcomed the new literacy centre.

"We see the potential for this new initiative by ACU to be further assistance to our efforts as a system of Catholic schools and for our teachers, our principals, and ultimately, our students," Mr Fox said.

"So we see great potential to draw on the best evidence about how to support students to learn to read."

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