Aus: Jennifer Buckingham 'Woolly thinking won't help with education'

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Jennifer's article in the Spectator touches upon an extremely important development in New South Wales whereby minister Susan Close heeded concerns about the proposed organisation for pilot trials in NSW of a phonics check. All credit to Susan Close for keeping an open mind, and a listening ear, to those concerns!

Woolly thinking won’t help with education

Jennifer Buckingham

https://spectator.com.au/2017/06/woolly ... education/

Fortunately, this week we also have an example of responsive policy making from the South Australian government. After a number of reading researchers expressed detailed concerns to the Department of Education and Child Development about the design of their trial of the UK Phonics Screening Check – namely, arguing that it should involve students in Year 1 rather than just Reception ― Education Minister Susan Close announced a review of the trial design and implementation. That’s the good news this week. One out of three isn’t bad.

Dr Jennifer Buckingham is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies and Director of the ‘FIVE From FIVE’ literacy campaign.

Do read the whole piece - it's important but not long!

Jennifer is also a member of IFERI's Advisory Group and you can read about her work here:

http://www.iferi.org/jennifer-buckingham/

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Jennifer's article provides a link to this page listing the schools involved in the phonics check trials:

https://www.decd.sa.gov.au/department/m ... sa-schools