Why learning to read is no luxury

More than one in 10 of us have dyslexia yet many Tasmanian parents are forced to pay private tutors to help their children, write Amelia Jones and Rosalie Martin

DYSLEXIA is a learning difference that makes reading and spelling difficult.

Dyslexia is common — more than 10 per cent of the population are on its continuum.

That’s more than 51,000 Tasmanians. It’s likely you have a friend, family member or work colleague who has dyslexia. But they probably won’t tell you.

Perhaps because of fear of being thought to be stupid, or the potential impact on expectations regarding their capability, or it could be because the cause of their difficulty with reading was never identified.

Despite the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, the education system in Tasmania does not consistently recognise or address the needs of children with dyslexia.

If our children are entitled to a free and appropriate public education under the law, why are so many parents paying tutors and speech pathologists to teach their children to read?

And why have so many parents had to become private tutors to teach their own children (and other children) who do not receive effective services at school?

The absence of an overarching educational policy framework for dyslexia is a significant contributor.

So is the lack of comprehensive pre-service and in-service teacher training about how to respond to dyslexia; and the lack of resources for its identification and remediation.

Because the education system does not provide these resources there is in an overreliance on parents to support their child’s learning needs.

This is a social injustice. It creates inequity for children.

It means that the provision of resources is dependent on factors associated with children’s family of origin, economic context, and the extent to which the child’s school is willing and able to allocate resources to children with dyslexia.

This no doubt contributes to the education divide highlighted in the Educational Opportunity in Australia Report 2020 by Sergio Macklin of the Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute, which tracked 300,000 children from school entry to adulthood and found that disadvantaged students were more than twice as likely as their peers to not be in study or work by the age of 24.

The response a child receives to their literacy challenges should not depend on where they live and how much their parents earn. But this is the truth of the matter in Tasmania, right now.

While there are supportive people and professionals, by and large Tasmanian parents face a significant struggle for the recognition of the needs of children who have dyslexia. They must traverse a complex terrain of nonintegrated systems to have their child’s dyslexia identified and to then obtain support.

The lack of structural recognition of dyslexia is itself a discrimination in the provision of education to children with dyslexia.

Policy recognition of dyslexia is needed. As is mandated teacher education relating to dyslexia and the allocation of resources for the identification, remediation, and accommodation of students with dyslexia throughout our systems of education.

The government’s needs-based funding model is a step in the right direction, but these funds must be applied effectively and can only be useful if children are identified — which in many cases does not occur.

Square Pegs and Connect42 see the results of these deficiencies first-hand: children failing at early ages, disengaging from school, and developing anxiety and poor self-esteem.

These children do not understand why they struggle to learn reading when their peers seem to find it easy.

They, and others, too often conclude they are stupid or lazy. Expectations are lowered and failure is accepted. As a result, tragically, people with dyslexia are heavily overrepresented in the justice system.

It does not have to be this way. It must not be this way. Dyslexia is a neurobiologically based disorder of the way the brain processes speech sound.

People with dyslexia have much to contribute. They are often talented in areas such as problem solving, creativity, leadership, and big-picture thinking — think Richard Branson, Steven Spielberg, and closer to home, University of Tasmania Vice Chancellor Professor Rufus Black.

There are simple assessments that can identify children who are likely to have literacy challenges as early as 3½ years of age. Early intervention is critical — and successful!

How we learn to read is settled science. Instructional methods informed by the #ScienceOfReading must be consistently introduced into all classrooms. The commitment to teaching Tasmanians to access print should not have a use-by date. It should continue throughout school and beyond.

Without structural change, many Tasmanian children with dyslexia will never realise their full potential. This is an unacceptable cost to the individual. It is also an unacceptable cost to our economy and community.

Change needn’t cost the earth. Nudging our existing resources and structures in the right direction by just a degree or two will result in a massive change in trajectory for people with dyslexia.

We need our decision-makers to demonstrate their care by driving systemic, structural change that supports schools and educators to flourish in the delivery of the science of reading. Not doing this is to accept that a percentage of our children don’t deserve to read.

We do not believe that the values of our decision-makers accord with this. We ask for their urgent, equitable reform of the systems they administer.

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month. #100percentliteracy

Amelia Jones and Rosalie Martin are the founders of Tasmanian not-forprofit literacy advocacy groups Square Pegs and Connect42 respectively.

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Governments are still using our Hydro jewel as a cash cow

Challenges for Hydro grow as its annual reports shrink, writes John Lawrence

HYDRO Tasmania’s recently released 2019-2020 annual report revealed a significant write down of generation assets due to reductions in future expected revenue.

The business case for Marinus, the second Bass Strait interconnector, which is based on estimates of future electricity prices, will need to be revised.

Hydro Tasmania’s overall book value declined by $219 million in 2019/20. The $174 million of underlying profit disguises the fact that Hydro’s balance sheet, the statement of financial position, suffered a further loss following a $249 million decline in 2018/19.

Hydro has lost $467 million, or 23 per cent, of value in two years.

Companies lose value in a variety of ways.

First, they may make trading losses. This didn’t occur with Hydro.

Second, excessive dividends may be paid.

This happened in 2019-2020 when borrowing was required to pay a special dividend to the government to help stabilise the ship of state.

The receipt of a dividend from a government business using borrowed funds is better for the government’s bottom line than were it to borrow itself.

An excessive dividend is painful for Hydro, but a blessing for the government.

The third way is for the company’s assets to lose value.

This happened in 2019-2020. Hydro’s generation assets were marked down by $870 million to a figure below cost, to the same level as 15 years ago when Basslink commenced.

The value of generation assets is based on expected future earnings, yet the annual report only makes passing reference to an “anticipated lower revenue environment”.

More attention was given to the company’s safety record and its $238,000 community support grant.

The fourth way is for a company’s liabilities to increase. Hydro, often at the government’s insistence, agrees to deals, an offtake agreement say, which ends up as an onerous contract because subsequent falls in prices means Hydro pays way above market price at the time.

There are offtake agreements covering Woolnorth, Musselroe and Granville Harbour wind farms.

A deal with Tasmanian Gas Pipeline TGP which ends up as a subsidy to major gas users is also a significant onerous contract.

TGP is now a sister company of Granville Harbour Wind, all owned by Pallisade Partners which includes the well-connected former deputy prime minister Mark Vaile.

The latest value of Hydro’s onerous contracts is $260 million.

We mustn’t forget that returns by Hydro to the government have been significant.

The 2019/20 returns totalling $202 million is third in the all-time rankings after the carbon tax years of 2014 and 2015.

But neither should we forget that the Hydro has received $678 million of equity since Basslink started, thereby boosting its book value. Without it, Hydro’s net position would be the same as 2006.

The high level of dividends demanded by governments have placed unreasonable stresses on

Hydro cash flow as it juggles to find enough to spend on updating its hydro assets.

Yet it always seems to find enough for IT capital spending, mostly software, with another $17.6 million outlaid in 2019-2020.

This was less than average which has seen $271 million spent over the last 10 years. Our other public electricity companies, Aurora, TasNetworks and its predecessor Transend, spend just as much.

The grand total for IT spending by electricity companies is more than $500 million over the past 10 years.

Hydro’s increasing challenges over time have coincided with an increasing reluctance to fully disclose what it’s doing. The annual report gets skinnier every year. Apart from the financials it’s just another media release.

Take the ongoing dispute with Basslink following the 2016 cable outage.

The only reason we know the fees in dispute are $31.85 million is because Basslink’s parent company is bound by the continuous disclosure obligations of the Singapore Stock Exchange to publicly divulge details.

Hydro has instead adopted a code of silence. At the 2019 Estimates hearing it refused to confirm or deny the amount in dispute, nor the $100 million in damages the government is claiming pursuant to a separate agreement with Basslink.

Hydro’s latest annual report confirms $5.5 million was paid to Clayton Utz, lawyers who handle complex contractual matters.

This takes the total paid to them over the last 5 years to $18 million, to settle a $33 million dispute whether it was a force majeure event where the full fee was payable upon recommencement or whether an availability adjustment factor should apply to compensate for losses due to the outage.

Hydro is a jewel, but it’s been hijacked by finance guys and used by governments as a cash cow.

At the very time we need more explanations, less are provided.

Its latest annual report is a sober reminder that Project Marinus is highly dependent on future prices.

As Robert Burns observed: “The best laid schemes of mice and men, gang aft a-gley, and leave us nought but grief and pain, for promised joy.”

John Lawrence is a Tasmanian economist.

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Age does not weary these stars

Cliff Richard joins a rare club in a field where longevity is rare, says Ian Cole

CLIFF Richard turned 80 this month.

For many of my generation he’s been around for ever.

He had his first hit song when I was in grade five.

Even though he was pre The Beatles and was a contemporary of Elvis Presley, he has continued with hit songs decade after decade.

From Summer Holiday to Congratulations to Mistletoe and Wine and numerous number ones before and after, he has succeeded for years in an industry where survival is generally short-term.

Another aspect of an artist’s life can be highlighted when they put themselves under a different spotlight. During his life, Cliff Richard has made headlines doing other things, mainly raising money for charity, but there were other moments.

In 2012, he took part in what he regarded as a favourite memory and that was carrying the Olympic Torch for a section of the Derby to Birmingham leg of the relay.

On another occasion in 1996 during a rain delay at the Wimbledon tennis championships, he led the crowd in an impromptu singing performance until the players could return on court. My daughter tells the story that while she was working at the Wimbledon Championships in London in the early 2000s, Cliff Richard was a regular attendee and always took time to speak to the workers at the gate. Good to hear!

However, my favourite story relates to the BBC production, The Young Ones. Taking the title of the show from one of Cliff Richard’s songs, the program centred on several dysfunctional young students sharing a flat somewhere in North London.

It was totally irreverent and quite violent in a slapstick manner, altogether displaying the opposite of any image which Cliff Richard may have portrayed.

The cast, among others, included Rik, a Cliff Richard fan, Vyvian, who was a violent punk-rocker, and Neil, a depressed hippy.

A few years after the last episode, Cliff Richard joined with the cast for a one-off performance for charity doing a rendition of one of his earlier hits, Living Doll.

Great stuff really.

There are many examples of artists continuing into their 80s and I guess Cliff Richard has the chance to join them.

Leonard Cohen was one who stands out as does comedian George Burns.

He thought he may as well keep going as he said: “Even going to sleep at my age is taking a risk!”

Back to Cliff Richard.

He received an OBE for his music and charity work back in 1980 and in 1995 was knighted.

He is now approaching his second OBE and this particular one is one which many of my generation are close to achieving while some, not in a hurry to achieve, would like to eventually. OBE (Over Bloody Eighty)!

Ian Cole is a retired Tasmanian teacher.