Victorian teachers secure multimillion-dollar phonics deal

Teachers will have access to greater resources to adopt a mandated phonics based approach to reading for prep to grade two students following a reported government deal with the teachers union.

Phonics help students break up words into individual sounds.

Teachers will now have access to greater resources to adopt a mandated phonics based approach to reading for prep to grade two students following a government deal with the teachers union.

It’s believed the state government has agreed to provide $5m in resources to aid teachers in implementing a mandated minimum of 25 minutes of the systematic synthetic phonics teaching method.

Phonics explicitly teaches the relationship between sounds and letters to read words, which differs from other common teaching methods that use pictures and context to guess words.

The deal comes as unions were reportedly not consulted prior to the announcement of the new teaching method in June last year, a requirement under their EBA.

But in a statement on X, Education Minister Ben Carroll said teachers were “never denied” a say in how the new style would be implemented.

“Before making the decision to mandate phonics I travelled the state discussing this topic with teachers and participated in a Sunday forum with the profession where I got the feedback and encouragement to go down this path,” he wrote.

Opposition Education spokeswoman Jess Wilson said the revelations exposed the state government’s “inability” to “implement evidence-based learning” in state schools.

“The minister and the Union have done a deal that will see Victorian children consigned to being taught with disproven teaching methods for the next two years,” she said.

The deal also featured an adjusted timeline with the amount of time teachers will have to adopt the style.

Australian Education Union Victorian Branch was contacted for comment.

Originally published as Victorian teachers secure multimillion-dollar phonics deal