Road map plan to eliminate illiteracy

Education advocates say the time for excuses is over; imploring the Tasmania government to take action on poor literacy levels.

The Tasmanian #100percentliteracy Alliance aims to stamp out illiteracy by 2031.

A group of education advocates has implored the Tasmanian government to commit to ambitious, measurable targets to dramatically improve literacy education across the state, amid concern that ongoing inaction is reinforcing unacceptably high illiteracy rates.

The Tasmanian #100percentliteracy Alliance, led by economist Saul Eslake, demographer Lisa Denny and previous Tasmanian of the Year recipient Rosalie Martin, has released a “Roadmap to Literacy” that aims to stamp out illiteracy by 2031.

At present, almost one in two Tasmanian adults is considered functionally illiterate, while one-quarter of Tasmanians fail to complete secondary school.

The alliance’s 10-year plan sets out detailed steps towards the goal of widespread literacy, including making the Year 1 screening check mandatory for all government schools, training all teachers in evidence-backed structured ­approaches to reading instruction, including synthetic phonics, and introducing language and literacy screening for Year 7 students to identify those at risk.

It would also see greater support for boosting literacy rates among those who enter the ­juvenile justice system and adult prisons.

Alliance spokeswoman Dr Denny said although the government had expressed good intentions, including launching in 2019 an aspirational target of 100 per cent functional literacy for all learners, a lack of meaningful, large-scale action meant little had changed.

“There actually hasn’t been any action at scale that could lead to any improvement,” she said.

“We’ve consistently heard excuses — references to Tasmania’s higher proportion of students from lower SES backgrounds — but it’s time we started putting our time and energy in action rather than finding excuses. We need to start owning this issue.”

Dr Denny said the alliance was calling on the government to take a leadership role and establish a ministerial taskforce chaired by Education Minister Jeremy Rockliff to kickstart the process.

She said measurable targets, such as ensuring all Year 7 students met the national minimum standard for reading and all secondary school graduates were proficient readers, were essential to track progress of the road map.

According to NAPLAN data, the proportion of Tasmania’s students who achieve the national minimum standard for reading by Year 7 has been declining since 2015. At present, almost one in five students fails to meet the benchmark. Proficiency is even lower by Year 9.

The state government last year invited 35 schools to take part in a trial of the Year 1 phonics check. However, it has no plans for the Education Department to collate or publicly release the data as has been the case in South Australia and NSW, which have both mandated the check. Nor does it have plans to expand the trial, telling state parliament last year that government schools would be “strongly encouraged” to use the Year 1 phonics check with their students in 2021.

Dr Denny said the inaction was an “opportunity lost”.

Mr Rockliff declined to comment on the phonics check.