Tried and tested teaching style produces great results

Ahead of the release on Wednesday of NAPLAN results for years 3, 5, 7 and 9 students in 9626 schools, a striking trend has emerged that is so important that the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority has highlighted it in advance. The development is nothing new or revolutionary and it is not a fad – quite the contrary. The breakthrough is conclusive evidence that an old-school teaching style, known as direct instruction and explicit teaching, works.

A return to tried and tested teaching methods, education editor Natasha Bita reports, has helped a cluster of Catholic schools in the ACT achieve dramatic improvements in literacy and numeracy. The schools make up 13 of the 20 schools identified by ACARA as “making a difference” in the ACT. Explicit instruction also proved its value in schools in diverse areas such as Ipswich Grammar School, west of Brisbane, which has moved from being ranked 128th among primary schools to third place in Queensland. DI also has helped Canley Vale High School in Sydney’s west outperform similar schools. Half of its students are from the poorest 25 per cent of families, with 97 per cent from predominantly Vietnamese families for whom English is a second language.

That the improvements identified through NAPLAN came about in the Catholic Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn across just four years is highly significant. Decades of experience and educational underachievement show that turning around school performances is exceedingly difficult and often takes many years, regardless of funding. The development also affirms the value of NAPLAN, a reform introduced by Julia Gillard as a means of accountability.

DI has been associated with some remote Indigenous communities since lawyer Noel Pearson introduced the method at Cape York schools in 2015. It helped students excel in reading, writing and maths. As we said at the time, the method was also needed in schools that were predominantly non-Indigenous. As with phonics in early reading teaching that finally has been implemented widely after dozens of reviews, decades of debate and determined resistance from sections of the education establishment, the wheels have turned slowly in relation to DI.

Parents who put up with education fads that have come and gone, often leaving their children struggling with the basics – the essential building blocks for further learning and employment – will understand why DI works. It is not rocket science. It was introduced in Catholic schools in Canberra and Goulburn, where schools were underperforming, in 2020 through the Catalyst program. The program is based on the scientific concept of cognitive load theory to ensure new information is embedded in students’ long-term memory. Lessons are fast-paced and highly interactive. Students are not overwhelmed with new information and are given time to practise and repeat concepts until they have mastered them.

Teachers direct and closely monitor students’ learning. That reverses the failed student-directed learning fad that for years expected students to “lead their own learning journey”, Bita writes.

The initiative of the Canberra and Goulburn archdiocese in breaking away from the pack four years ago underlines the value of Australia’s hybrid school system, which provides choice between state, Catholic and independent schools.

DI should become more widely used, if not the norm. Knowledge Society, which designed the Catalyst program, is working on explicit instruction techniques with Catholic schools in Geelong and Victoria’s Sandhurst diocese and 20 public schools in Western Australia. It promises to make an important contribution to the educational turnaround the nation has long needed.