State opposition plans to change way kids learn to read

The way Victorian kids are taught to read would change under a curriculum overhaul being planned by the state opposition.

The way children are taught to read would change under a state opposition plan,

Kids would no longer be taught to read using pictures or repetition under a Coalition literacy overhaul.

If elected in November, the opposition plans to scrap the current “balanced literacy” approach and replace it with a more structured method.

The Victorian curriculum currently uses both predictable texts – resources that require them to derive sounds from pictures and context rather than only learning how letters themselves are used to form words, and phonics – which teach students to read using letters and sounds, rather than pictures.

Grade one students are set to be tested on their ability to do this from next year.

But the shake-up would mean a shift away from predictable texts and using pictures to guess the meaning of words.

Students would instead be taught about the sound each alphabetical letter makes and how to string them together to form sound combinations, such as how the ‘ou’ combination sounds in the word ‘house’ or ‘tion’ sounds in ‘reservation’.

Literacy learning methods have long been divided into two major camps.

The shake-up would mean a shift away from predictable texts.

Research has demonstrated that matching the sounds of spoken English with letters advances students’ reading and comprehension skills more quickly.

But academics have also backed the balanced literacy approach, in which students are taught to memorise words using a combination of practices such as language, comprehension and phonics.

Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP), the explicit instruction of alphabetical sounds, would replace the current curriculum’s dual approach from prep onwards following a Liberal election victory.

Students would be tested in grade two on a case-by-case basis, in addition to compulsory testing in grade one.

Classroom reading materials would be upgraded and teachers upskilled to deliver the new literacy method under the $200m curriculum reform.

Opposition Education Minister David Hodgett said children would continue to fall behind after remote learning during the lockdowns if approaches to reading were not improved to remove “guesswork” from learning to read.

“Only the introduction of explicit and systematic phonics instruction and other evidence-based reading approaches can give our children the literacy education they need,” he said.

“It’s time to end the era of teaching children to read via guesswork and begin a new era of explicit instruction to set them up for decades of literacy success.”

Opposition leader Matthew Guy said the new approach would simultaneously improve students’ spelling and vocabulary.

The most recent NAPLAN data shows that Victorian students trumped national averages in both reading and spelling last year.

But new findings from a Productivity Commission report from earlier this month revealed that one third of students struggling the most had not improved, despite billions of dollars in increased funding for education.

The report found that about one in 10 year 9 students didn’t meet standards in either numeracy or literacy.

Professor of cognitive psychology at La Trobe University’s School of Education Pamela Snow said the pledge would streamline how reading is taught across all Victorian schools.

“I am delighted to see this commitment to implementing evidenced-based systematic phonics instruction as the starting point for teaching reading in primary schools,” she said.

“It is time to end the debate on literacy education and let explicit phonics teaching be the standard starting point in schools, not the ambulance that is wheeled in as an afterthought when students struggle.”