Victorian state school students to be taught reading through phonics from 2025

Victorian state primary schools will have to change how they teach kids to read after the Education Minister revealed a synthetic phonics approach will be introduced from next year.

Students will be taught phonics and phonemic awareness for a minimum of 25 minutes every day.

• What back-to-basics reading move means for your child

Victorian state primary schools will be required to overhaul the way they teach their youngest students to read.

Education Minister Ben Carroll announced that from next year every student in prep to grade 2 will be taught to read through a systematic synthetic phonics approach.

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 major education policy overhaul replaces the current system which lets principals choose their own methods to teach students how to read.

Students will be taught phonics and phonemic awareness for a minimum of 25 minutes every day.

Independent schools have the flexibility to apply curriculum how they see fit. Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools made the change earlier this year.

Mr Carroll said research shows an explicit teaching model worked best for the largest number of students, and helped to capture those who may be falling behind.

Ben Carroll says research shows an explicit teaching model worked best for the largest number of students, and helped to capture those who may be falling behind. Picture: Getty Images

He said studies from across Australia, the United States and United Kingdom recommended that systematic synthetic phonics is the most effective method to teach children to read.

“The evidence shows that explicit teaching and the use of systematic synthetic phonics instructions gets results,” he said.

“We want to ensure that every student in a Victorian government school is taught to read using the evidence-base that fosters the strongest outcomes.”

Opposition education spokeswoman Jess Wilson welcomed the reforms but said the government had dragged its feet on fully implementing phonics.

At the 2018 and 2022 state elections, the Victorian Coalition announced policy positions to introduce a year one phonics check and implement evidence-based literacy learning techniques across all government schools.

“For a decade, Labor’s phonics-phobia has denied students the quality education they deserve,” Ms Wilson said.

“Phonics and structured literacy are critical to giving students the fundamental skills they need to achieve their full potential and these evidence-based learning techniques must be fully implemented as a priority.

“As recent NAPLAN results show, more than a quarter of Victorian students aren’t meeting literacy standards. This is unacceptable and demonstrates the impact of Labor’s decade long failure to implement evidence-based learning.”

Australian Catholic University Centre for the Advancement of Literacy director professor Rauno Parrila said the announcement was a win for the state’s school children, but stressed the importance of ensuring teachers were equipped with the skills they needed to implement the mandates.

“We need to ensure that both the teachers of the future, as well as current teachers, receive high-quality training and ongoing professional learning underpinned by rigorous empirical research to achieve the positive student outcomes this announcement is aiming for,” he said.

“The best way to ensure reading instruction is evidence-based is to make sure there is sufficient expertise in every school to meet the daily challenges that come with the diverse student population schools serve.”