Low literacy can drive teenagers to a life of crime, National Children’s Commissioner reveals

The National Children’s Commissioner has drawn the line between illiteracy and youth crime.

Woolooware Public School Year 2 students Olivia, Elke, teacher Jill Grant, Max, Darcy, Louis and Jedd check out the latest books at the school library. Picture: John Feder/The Australian

The National Children’s Commissioner has warned that teenage illiteracy is fuelling youth crime, as education departments drag their feet in mandating the use of phonics to teach children to read and write.

Commissioner Anne Hollonds called on schools to do more to help struggling students, after her youth justice investigation found some detainees had never learned to read and write at school.

She said one sixteen-year-old boy in youth detention could not even write his own name, and only started learning to read behind bars.

“Most of them have extremely low literacy,’’ Ms Hollonds told The Australian. “The kids who are in jail, they have a lot of early language deficits, in terms of speaking as well as reading and writing.

“The fact that kids have to wait to be in prison to get one-on-one intensive learning support that they need is just abominable.”

Ms Hollonds said that her “heartbreaking and gruelling’’ interviews with more than 150 children as young as 11, who had been in the youth justice system or were now in jail, revealed most of them had been suspended, expelled or dropped out of school.

“They kept talking about the importance of school, how they want to go to school but they don’t, often because they don’t feel they belong,’’ she said.

“For kids not in school, they’re going to be on the streets and start getting involved with negative behaviours – it’s entirely predictable.’’

Despite Ms Hollond’s concerns, some state governments are dragging out the introduction of phonics-based methods which teach children to read by sounding out the letters in words.

NSW, Western Australia and South Australia are the only states to have mandated phonics instruction in schools this year.

MultiLit, a Macquarie University research initiative, warned that too many teachers are still using discredited teaching methods that involve children guessing words from pictures, or learning all their words by heart.

A survey of 600 teachers shows that many schools are failing to cope with high numbers of struggling readers. Picture: iStock

Its survey of 600 teachers shows that many schools are failing to cope with high numbers of struggling readers.

Two out of three teachers said that 40 per cent of their students are missing out on remedial intervention.

MultiLit literacy specialist Alison McMurtrie said explicit and classroom-wide instruction of core reading skills – including phonics – is the best way to teach children to read.

“Good intervention programs can help prevent children from falling off the cliff, however quality classroom instruction is what stops them getting close to that cliff edge in the first place,” she said.

“Fewer than one in five children who are behind in literacy in Year 3 catch up and stay caught up throughout their schooling.

“This has huge implications on their success and wellbeing throughout school and their life opportunities more broadly.

“Getting that initial instruction right in the first place is key.”

One in three Australian students failed to meet baseline standards for literacy in this year’s National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) – with one in 10 so far behind they require remedial lessons to catch up.

At Woolooware Public School south of Sydney, principal Jason Ezzy credits his school’s improvement in NAPLAN reading and writing to the phonics-based lessons he embraced in 2019.

At Woolooware Public School, “explicit phonics is helping students learn across the board”. Picture: John Feder/The Australian

Mr Ezzy said it took just three months for teachers to master the new teaching style.

He said the former teaching method of “inquiry-based learning’’ – which puts the onus on students to discover information themselves – resulted in 15 per cent of children “switching off’’.

“Now we’re seeing some great results, and the number of kids requiring intervention has definitely decreased,’’ he said.

“Explicit phonics is helping students learn across the board.

“Teachers regularly check the students’ understanding and we’re constantly revisiting concepts, so there are no gaps in the instruction.’’

Mr Ezzy said he found children learned more from explicit phonics-based reading instruction, than the conventional “whole language’’ approach.

“Children were immersed in great texts on the assumption that by osmosis they would learn to read,’’ he said.

“It was a lot of, ‘just immerse them in it and they’ll pick it up’.

“Children did learn to read but I’ve seen a lot of them fall through the gaps.’’

Mr Ezzy, who has been teaching for 30 years, said he would recommend the MultiLit system to other schools.

“Phonics teaches students to decode letters and sounds, learning to crack the code rather than guessing and relying on external information,’’ he said.

“Children are more engaged in their learning and they’re less likely to act out, because they’re getting all the attention for succeeding.’’

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare is pushing all states and territories to adopt explicit teaching methods and phonics as a condition of $16bn in extra commonwealth funding for public schools over the next decade.

So far only the Northern Territory and Western Australia have agreed, with other states demanding the commonwealth double its funding offer.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Mr Clare said the federal government is investing in short courses for teachers to help them learn explicit teaching methods, manage classrooms and teach reading through phonics.

“I’m also strengthening the courses teachers do at university to make sure they’re better prepared to teach children to read, write and do maths,’’ he said.

Federal Opposition education spokeswoman Senator Sarah Henderson said the failure to teach children to read through explicit teaching of phonics has “damaged a generation of Australians’’.

“Consigning students to a lifetime of functional illiteracy is akin to child neglect,’’ she said.

A Queensland Education spokesman said a Year 1 phonics check will be adopted next year while a “reading commitment”, launched last October, “is a three-year commitment to embed evidence-informed practice.’’

Asked when phonics would be mandated, he said that “all Queensland state schools currently have a focus on the teaching of phonics in English – this focus will strengthen as schools implement the updated Australian Curriculum from 2025.’’

In the Northern Territory – where nearly 60 per cent of students in Years 3 and 9 failed to meet baseline reading standards and one in three require remedial instruction – children will not be tested on or taught phonics until next year.

Victoria will require primary school teachers to teach 25 minutes of phonics daily, starting next year.

A Tasmanian Education Department spokeswoman said from 2025, that all primary school teachers will be required to deliver at least an hour of structured literacy instruction every day.

The ACT will introduce a phonics check for Year 1 students next year, as well as “decodable readers’’ – sequenced books with words children can sound out – but has failed to mandate phonics as an instructional method.