SA students make gains in phonics screening check and NAPLAN reading results

It all starts with words – and what makes a word. And SA is smashing it so well that other states want to copy us.

Teaching the basics is paying off with South Australia’s youngest students making big gains in literacy in the wake of a change to phonics-based learning and assessment.

In the state’s third successive improvement, the 2021 phonics screening check results, published on Tuesday, show 67 per cent of year 1 students achieved the benchmark.

This was up from 63 per cent in 2020 and from 43 per cent in 2018, when the statewide check was introduced.

The “fantastic result”, and the big jump in NAPLAN reading scores for year 3 students, which Education Minister John Gardner attributes to phonics-based learning, was making other states look up to SA, he said.

“SA is years ahead of other states,” he said.

“Some other states are now sitting up and taking notice, particularly identifying the significant improvements in this year’s NAPLAN results.

“It shows that public schools and preschools are implementing the right measures and practices to lift literacy among our state’s children.

“This year, SA recorded its highest ever results in year 3 and 5 reading in the National Assessment Plan – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN).”

In the phonics screening check, all year 1 students are individually shown up to 40 words by their teacher and asked to sound them aloud.

Half of the words are real and half are pseudo words, with complexity increasing as the check progresses.

Getting 28 words correct from the 40 was set as the benchmark based on the Australian curriculum, following analysis by independent consultant Jennifer Buckingham.

SA’s phonics teaching program and check test have been adapted from a UK model.

NSW, which introduced a phonics check this year, has taken on board SA’s teaching materials.

The Victorian Education Department agrees there is universal acceptance on the importance of teaching phonics but how it should be taught is still under debate. The Victorian parliament has been petitioned to introduce a screening check.

Checks are on the way in Tasmania and under consideration in WA.

The federal government allocated $10.8m for a screening test which is available for teachers to administer voluntarily.

However, some academics oppose screening checks as being too simplistic, unnecessarily stressful for very young students and not as valid as a teacher’s professional judgment.

The Education Department began work on phonics in 2016 and a 2017 trial showed there was considerable appetite by teachers for its introduction, the executive director of curriculum and learning, Susan Cameron, said.

“It has had bipartisan support,” she said.

“We’re really excited because to see the joy on the faces of teachers when their kids achieve so much more than they thought possible is so motivating, particularly country schools and lower socio-economic schools.”

SA teachers had accepted the evidence and avoided the “literacy wars” between strong proponents of phonics-based learning versus a “whole language” approach, she said.

Phonics helps children learn the connection between written letters and sounds, whereas whole language does not decode words.

Phonics check helps teachers assess reading levels of each child.

Ms Cameron said reception teachers would begin to use the phonics method from next year.

But she added that phonics was only one element in literacy alongside comprehension, fluency, vocabulary and other aspects, she added.

Year 1 students, Elaine, Danielle, Olivia and Ted at Richmond Primary School in Keswick, where they’ve been learning phonics. Picture: Matt Loxton

Richmond Primary School teacher Diana Harris said the phonics program had delivered excellent results in year 1 and would be extended to year 2 next year.

“Children learn to read using texts that are decodable, focusing on the sounds and tricky words that have been explicitly taught,” Ms Harris said.

“Once children have developed their understanding and confidence with the phonetic code they are able to decode unfamiliar words which opens up their world of reading, allowing them a much wider variety of texts to read.”

Mr Gardner said it was encouraging that gains in the phonics screening checks were across the board, including among students with a disability and Aboriginal students.

“Every type of student in SA has seen an improvement,” he said.

“There’s always more to do but this is a very solid start.

“In addition to the new phonics screening check for year 1 students, we have also introduced literacy coaches with expertise in phonics and teaching students with dyslexia and other learning difficulties, and a range of evidence-backed support and training for schools and teachers.”