How back-to-basics teaching is arresting Australia’s lagging literacy

As boys lag in literacy, schools are reverting to a back-to-basics reading approach to teach kids to read.

Fairfield West Public school children, from left: Loan Tran (11), Chace Ekueti (11) and Mirai Korkis (11) have improved their reading skills over time with NAPLAN. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian.

Even after 35 years of teaching, Genelle Petruszenko still feels the thrill of watching the “light bulb moment” as young children learn to read.

“I feel absolutely elated,’’ she says. “It will open doors for them and give them opportunities in their future – the earlier we can start to make a difference in a child’s life, the better.’’

As the principal of Fairfield West Public School, in Sydney’s west, Petruszenko has made literacy the priority for teaching at the school where one in three students is a refugee, and two-thirds live in Australia’s poorest households.

Her explicit teaching of reading – with an emphasis on phonics-based instruction to ensure children can read by sounding out words and letters – is key to a turnaround in reading and writing in primary schools across Australia.

New 2021 test results for the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) reveal primary students’ reading skills have improved over the past decade.

The proportion of eight-year-olds struggling to read has halved since NAPLAN tests began in 2008.

Data from the May 2021 tests shows that 4 per cent of Year 3 students failed to meet minimum reading standards in 2021, compared to 8 per cent in 2008.

In Year 5, the number of low achievers has almost halved from 9 per cent to 4.9 per cent.

Grade 3 and 5 kids in Naplan have proven to be the most successful generally. Balwyn Primary School year 5 students Carissa 10yrs Year 5, Jeongbae 11yrs Year 5 and Annabel 10yrs Year 5. Picture: David Caird

But the results have gone downhill in high school, where students are less likely to be given remedial reading assistance and literacy problems are compounded as written assessments and assignments grow more complex across every subject area.

Boys are twice as likely as girls to be semi-literate, exposing a gaping gender gap that will disadvantage boys in the learning areas where they usually excel: maths and science.

In Year 9, one in every 10 girls and one in five boys failed to meet the minimum standard in writing by the age of 15, meaning they cannot punctuate sentences, spell most simple and common words, or write a story in paragraphs.

Eleven per cent of boys and 6.3 per cent of girls failed to read at the minimum standard, and were unable to interpret a labelled diagram, find information in a text, and identify the main idea of a paragraph.

Failing to read fluently is an educational handicap for students, making it harder for them to learn through high school or university and damaging their work prospects. Indigenous students, and those whose parents are unemployed, are the most likely to fall behind, with the gap growing wider as they go through school. Nearly one in three Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children cannot read properly in Year 9, compared to the national average of 8.7 per cent. Students with unemployed parents are twice as likely as children with working parents to struggle with reading and writing.

The Centre for Independent Studies’ research fellow in education policy, Glenn Fahey, wants students to be screened for literacy problems when they start high school.

“Once you reach high school, there’s very little direct instruction in literacy,’’ he says.

“It puts students at a huge disadvantage when it comes to all subjects they encounter. Poor literacy is a huge problem with the increased use of word-based problems in mathematics, especially for boys.

“When students are assessed on a geography test and give a poorly written response, you’re actually identifying a reading and writing deficit rather than a geography deficit.’’

The disastrous results in high school coincide with teenagers’ tendency to shun books in favour of technology, with online gaming, social media and on-demand television chewing up the hours an old-school teenager of the ’80s or ’90s might have spent with their noses in a book.

But the failure is also a legacy of teaching fads that spurned phonics in favour of “word recognition’’, which taught students to memorise words by heart and interpret texts by looking at pictures.

Australian Catholic University senior research fellow Dr Kevin Donnelly, who co-reviewed the national curriculum in 2014, blames the literacy lag on three decades of the “whole language’’ approach to teaching. “The whole-language approach was that you learn to read like you learn to talk, but they’re fundamentally different,’’ he says.

“Now in a lot of primary schools the penny’s dropped, and results are improving.’’

Donnelly believes the “feminisation’’ of teaching and the curriculum puts boys at a disadvantage.

“The way they teach literacy now, it’s all about feelings and emotions and deconstructing the text in terms of power relationships, and boys turn off,’’ he says. “Boys generally want to read a good yarn.’’

Fairfield West Public school children reading with Deputy Principle Tracy Aslani. Jane Dempster/The Australian.

MultiLit strategy director Dr Jennifer Buckingham, who chaired the federal government’s expert advisory group on a Year 1 literacy check slowly being introduced across Australia, credits the return to phonics-based reading instruction for primary school improvements.

“Once children master the skill of phonics – decoding and sounding out words – that gives them the ability to read everything they come across,’’ she says

“They have to continue the focus on reading and building up comprehension and vocabulary in the upper years of primary school. The more kids read books, the better they get at reading.’’

At Fairfield West Public School, Petruszenko uses “explicit instruction’’, so teachers give detailed, guided and tailored directions to children and then check their learning.

Experienced subject experts work elbow to elbow with younger teachers in the classrooms.

“We have a moral purpose,’’ Petruszenko says. “Literacy will give students the skills they need to go into high school, TAFE, work or university. The school has a culture of high expectations and we never give up.’’

Reading is a form of fun at the Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Primary School in Sydney’s North Strathfield, where students can climb into a hanging net to read in the well-stocked library.

Eighty per cent of the Year 3 students are in the top two bands in NAPLAN literacy testing – an achievement principal Dr Cathy Young credits to explicit and tailored teaching that has resulted in “boys walking into school reading books’’.

“The teaching is quite structured – we can’t just expect children to learn by osmosis,’’ Young says.

“Children are given multiple opportunities to practise their skills and there is constant monitoring and tracking of children’s performance.

Principal Dr Cathy Young of Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Primary School North Strathfield in Sydney.

“We do a battery of tests at the start of the year and throughout, to identify students’ point of need. We group children into like-minded, like-ability groups so the teaching is more targeted and specific and relevant, and struggling readers are introduced to an intervention program.’’

Young says reading is “the most fundamental skill we can teach any child’.’

“If we have taught a child to read we’ve opened up a whole new world for them,’’ she says.

“Without reading, they’re severely disadvantaged at five and 15 and 25 and 50. Children must learn to read, and read well – there’s no excuse.’’