Grattan Institute report reveals only two in five NT kids read proficiently

The NT’s reading proficiency rate is ‘really distressing’ and falls well below the national average by 27 percentage points.

Alarm bells are ringing after fresh data revealed only two in five Territory students could read proficiently.

The NT’s disturbingly low reading proficiency rate stands at 41 per cent, lagging behind the next highest-performing jurisdiction – Tasmania – by 21 percentage points.

The Grattan Institute’s latest report revealed only 68 per cent of Australian students could read proficiently in 2023 and could cost the nation $40 billion in their lifetime.

The NT’s reading proficiency rate is less than half the nation’s long-term goal of 90 per cent.

The report found the NT was one of two jurisdictions with limited publicly available information about its recommended approach to reading instruction.

“This leaves parents and the community in the dark about the reading approaches used in their children’s classrooms,” the report noted.

Education Minister Mark Monaghan said a range of “age-appropriate pedagogies” were used to teach kids to read, in line with the Australian Curriculum.

Mr Monaghan said the Education Department provided guidelines to schools regarding effective reading instructions, with the use of phonics being a best practice, evidence-based approach.

Education Minister Mark Monaghan. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

“Our focus in the early years is on the Big 6 of Literacy – language, phonics, sounds awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension,” he said.

“It is important to note, the Territory’s demographic is vastly different from the rest of the country, 70.2 per cent of our students are located in remote and very remote areas, almost 40 per cent of students in the NT are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, compared to the national average of 6.3 per cent, and for the large majority of those students English is a second, third or even fourth language.”

Mr Monaghan said the Territory was on track to lift the NT’s reading proficiency by 15 per cent over the next decade, as recommended by the Grattan Institute.

NT author and The Bookshop Darwin manager Sean Guy was deeply concerned by the NT's reading proficiency rate. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

Local author and The Bookshop Darwin manager Sean Guy was visibly shocked when he learned of the Territory’s poor literacy performance.

He said it was a “really distressing” statistic.

“You sort of picture that in a first-world country, it would be up around 80–90 per cent,” Mr Guy said.

“Even with things like learning disabilities and dyslexia, there are so many techniques now – with different coloured pages and different font styles – to help kids like that understand the words.”

Mr Guy said getting kids engaged with reading – a skill one can’t go through life without – started with parents demonstrating their own interest in reading.

He said it was also important to let kids choose their own reading material, “no matter how dumb you think it is”.

“Parents often will only get the books that they think kids should read, whereas really you should be getting books that kids want to read,” Mr Guy said.

“If they’re enjoying it, just let them read that and then they’ll progress at their own rate.”

• The bullet point summary was created with the assistance of AI technology (PaLM2) then edited and approved for publication by an editor.