Critics blast move to allow kids to listen to audiobooks in Premier’s Reading Challenge
Critics have blasted the decision to allow every NSW child to be able to listen to audiobooks as part of the Premier’s Reading Challenge, alarming children’s literacy experts and parents.
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EXCLUSIVE
A decision to allow every NSW child to listen to audiobooks as part of the Premier’s Reading Challenge was reversed after The Saturday Telegraph highlighted the outrage it had sparked among children’s literacy experts.
The rules were relaxed this year so every child could listen to the audio version of a book as part of the challenge.
Readers were previously permitted to listen to audiobooks only at the discretion of their teacher, with the caveat “as long as you read along” with the physical book.
But this year’s controversial rule change stated that any child could opt for audiobooks and should read along “where possible”.
NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell was last night furious with the rule change, saying the whole purpose of the competition was to encourage children to read more. “It is a reading challenge, not a listening challenge,” she said.
“As soon as this change was brought to my attention I requested it be reversed immediately.”
Children with learning difficulties will still be able to use audiobooks.
University of Sydney children’s literacy expert Prof Alyson Simpson said audiobooks could help struggling students engage in reading, but they had to follow along with the printed text.
“If it is completely replacing reading print texts, the student is not having to do the decoding of the written word to make meaning from it,” she said.
Director of strategy for Macquarie University’s literacy program provider MultiLit, Jennifer Buckingham, said children who listened to, rather than read, books were deprived of the spelling, grammar and sentence construction skills that come from physically reading.
“It is a shame if the original purpose of the challenge, which is reading, shifts away from reading,” she said.
“Listening rather than actually reading the book does not seem to me a way of reaching the objective the challenge set out to achieve.”
International data last year found NSW students suffered the worst drop in reading scores in the country.
Only 56 per cent of students in NSW met the national proficiency standard in reading, compared to 59 per cent of Australian children.
Sydney mum Natasha Hammond said she wanted her children Nadia, 10, and Hugo, 7, to read the physical books rather than use the audio version.
“I am quite conscious of the fact that everything is moving away from printed books … however, there is a real importance for kids to actually read a text,” she said.
Originally published as Critics blast move to allow kids to listen to audiobooks in Premier’s Reading Challenge