Phonics testing fuels big hopes for South Australia’s next NAPLAN results

Phonics screening and teaching is helping the state’s students improve their NAPLAN results – and it’s hoped next year’s scores will be even better.

A focus on phonics teaching is being hailed as a driver of year 3 literacy improvements – but next year schools can expect even stronger gains, the state’s outgoing Education Minister says.

John Gardner said phonics tests in year 1 – and an increased emphasis on teaching the skill in primary schools – was helping drive up students’ NAPLAN results in their first year of sitting the test.

But he said next year, when the first students to receive the Year 1 screening hit year 5, the state could expect even bigger improvements.

“The early signs of it are in the NAPLAN results from last year,” Mr Gardner said.

Outgoing Education Minister John Gardner says improvements in education are expected to get even better. Picture: Matt Loxton

“As long as we stay the course, those gains will accelerate. Next year we’ll have year 3s and year 5s in NAPLAN that have had not only the benefit of strong phonics instruction but also the less interrupted start to the year.”

Phonics, which the Education Department says is “the relationship between letters and sounds” involves “decoding words”, or breaking them down into smaller elements.

During the phonics screening, which started in SA in 2018, children are asked to read up to 40 words.

Some are real and others are made up, to help determine whether they are correctly identifying words because of their phonics skills.

The test helps teachers identify which children may need extra help to develop their reading skills.

Year 2 students Ruby, 7 and Tanish, 7 with principal Yunni Seindanis at Torrensville Primary School. Picture: Michael Marschall

School communities are digesting the results of last year’s NAPLAN tests at each institution, which were publicly released last week.

Torrensville Primary principal Yunni Seindanis said the school enjoyed improvements in its reading and writing results during the most recent NAPLAN tests and phonics teaching “definitely contributed” to students’ performance.

“This year, our aim is to increase the percentage of students in a higher band,” he said.

At the school, where about a third of the children have diverse backgrounds, 90 per cent of year 1 students met their phonics benchmarks during last year’s test.

“Aside from a sense of wellbeing and belonging, learning to read is one of the most important skills for our primary school children – it opens up a world of endless opportunities to them,” Mr Seindanis said.

SA was the first state to introduce the year 1 phonics screening and other states are now considering following suit.

Education Department director of curriculum policy and standards Ken Lountain said: “(Last year) we did get our best year 3 reading results since the test started in 2008 and it’s fair to assume that the emphasis on phonics is helping.”

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