Jessica Del Rio | ACT schools letting down Canberra students learning to read

Unfortunately, things are not improving for young people in Australia with four in 10 Australian students not meeting the Australian national proficiency standard for reading in the Programme for International Student Assessment.

And Australia's results are going backwards. Since testing began, Australia's rankings among OECD countries for reading have dropped, falling from 4^th in 2000 to 16^th in 2018.

The latest NAPLAN results confirm far too many Australian students are not meeting literacy benchmarks and need additional support.

These children come from all sorts of backgrounds, but children from marginalised backgrounds are significantly over-represented in what is often referred to as Australia's long tail of underachievement.

The indicator of a well-performing education system is one in which schooling elevates children above the circumstances into which they are born. In Australia we have an education system that entrenches intergenerational disadvantage.

It doesn't have to be this way. There is high-quality scientific research on the core skills for reading which have been identified through over 40 years of multidisciplinary research in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, speech-language pathology and education.

But there is a big gap between this research and its application in classroom practices.

Now, a new report from Equity Economics, commissioned by the Code REaD Dyslexia Network, estimates that $942 million is required in 2023-24 so that the rest of the country can follow reforms that have already rolled out in South Australia and NSW.

These jurisdictions have attempted to bridge the gap between research and classroom practice and to bring coherence to their curriculum, professional development of teachers, with universal screening to identify students who are struggling to learn to read and intervention so that these students catch up.

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The ACT has not made a similar system-wide investment. As with some other jurisdictions, there are high levels of school autonomy in the ACT with decisions about curriculum and performance falling within the control of school principals and school boards.

There is limited publicly available information about how children are taught to read in ACT schools, but it is understood that the cueing method is popular across many schools.

This method encourages children to guess words by looking at the first letter of the word and based on visuals and syntax.

The Australian Curriculum requires all schools to cease using this method of instruction, but it requires a significant system-wide investment in teacher training, resources and student books to do so. Unlike nearly every other state and territory there are no indications the ACT government will make such an investment.

And nearly all the other jurisdictions have some sort of phonics testing for students in year 1 except for the ACT. This means that there is no universal gatekeeper mechanism in the ACT to find those children who are struggling to learn to read.

Our consultations with teachers, parents and speech pathologists indicate that intervention programs in ACT schools lack consistency, fidelity, and staffing, resulting in inadequate support for struggling students, and some parents (who can afford it) having to pay for private tutoring or switch schools.

In a report released earlier this year, new analysis from Equity Economics showed that Catholic schools in the ACT have significantly improved school performance since the introduction of system wide reforms to bring evidence into classrooms.

In 2019, 42 per cent of Catholic schools and 54 per cent of government schools were underperforming in reading. By 2022, only 4 per cent of Catholic schools were underperforming compared to 60 per cent of government schools.

There were similar improvements for Catholic schools in writing (going from 71 per cent underperforming in 2019 to 13 per cent) and in spelling (going from 71 per cent to 21 per cent). Government schools in Canberra have not experienced the same lift. There shouldn't be any reason for students in government schools to be outperformed by students in non-government schools.

There is clearly significant room for improvement for ACT students. The latest NAPLAN data shows that one in three year 9 students aren't meeting reading proficiency benchmarks. And this percentage rises to 66 per cent for students whose parents didn't finish high school and 61 per cent for Indigenous students.

There must be serious conversations in all jurisdictions about whether their education systems are coherent across initial teacher education for pre-service teachers at university, professional development for in-service teachers, teaching practices in classrooms, curriculum materials and progress monitoring and intervention. The objective is to ensure that all children access high quality instruction and those children who need extra support get it.