The ACT government must take action after it was called out by yet another report on reading instruction.
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The Grattan Institute's comprehensive report on why Australia needs a reading guarantee has pointed out that the ACT has not emphatically embraced the scientific evidence on how children learn to read.
On top of this, it is very difficult to find out how reading is taught in ACT public schools as there is a lack of publicly available information.
The Grattan Institute points out that some states have already made steps towards an evidence-based approach to teaching children to read.
South Australia made the first move in 2018 with its literacy guarantee. The NSW, Western Australia, Tasmania and Queensland governments also made commitments to lift the standard of reading in schools.
The so-called "reading wars" are well and truly over. Inquiry after inquiry has shown that a structured approach is the most efficient way to teach students to read. This was shown in the 2005 National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy in Australia.
The UK had a similar review in 2006 known as the Rose report. The difference is England actually took the results seriously and now it ranks fourth in the world in international reading tests.
For too long the ACT has been able to hide behind seemly good results in NAPLAN. The raw scores always put the ACT in the lead compared with other states. But when you compare ACT students with those with a similar socio-educational background, the ACT is not top of the class.
The Education Directorate insists ACT public schools provide a systematic, evidence-based approach to early literacy instruction. And yet by the age of 15, one-in-three Canberra students are not meeting national reading benchmarks. Parents are paying up to $150 per session for tutoring to help their children catch up.
The problem is that misguided ideas about how children learn to read persist in our education system. These ideas came about in the 1970s and are broadly known as "whole language" or "balanced literacy".
These outdated approaches view reading as something that children will naturally pick up if they are immersed in literature. Students are encouraged to work out words they don't know based on the context - known as cueing - rather than sounding out the word.
However, many years of scientific research shows that reading is a skill that must be taught to children. The science of reading shows that a structured, synthetic phonics program is the most effective way to do this.
The ACT government has acknowledged the problems by setting up the inquiry into literacy and numeracy.
The directorate would do well to learn from the reforms made in the Catholic systemic schools in the Canberra Goulburn Archdiocese. These schools have worked hard to retrain all teachers to deliver explicit instruction in literacy and numeracy so that every child receives a similar standard of education.
The cost of not teaching children to be proficient readers is too great. The Grattan Institute estimates that for those students in school today who are hardest hit by poor reading performance, the cost to Australia is $40 billion over their lifetimes.
There is absolutely no reason why parents should be paying for tutoring just so that their children can learn a basic skill that should be taught in school. The ACT government must get serious about ensuring all children have the chance to read and succeed in life.
