Dr Jennifer Buckingham writes another succinct and well-written piece via The Centre for Independent Studies following Minister Nick Gibb's visit to Australia and Jennifer's visit to England:
I had the privilege of travelling to England to speak with some of the world’s best researchers on how children learn to read, and to observe how high-performing schools use this research to get all children reading.
There is no longer any serious debate in England about the need for explicit phonics instruction in early reading instruction. In fact, it is mandatory for all English primary schools to teach synthetic phonics — a method of instruction that systematically shows children the connection between spoken and written language, and how to use the English alphabetic code to read and spell.
The quality of synthetic phonics instruction is still uneven. Not all teachers have sufficient depth of knowledge and expertise yet. Nonetheless, there is evidence via the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check (PSC) that instruction has improved. In the first year of the national PSC in 2012, 58% of Year 1 students achieved the expected standard. In 2016, 81% of students achieved the standard.
England’s progress in implementing effective early reading instruction was accelerated by the ‘Rose Review’ of early reading by Sir Jim Rose, published in 2006. It strongly endorsed the ‘Simple View of Reading’– a conceptual model which emphasises the importance of both decoding (word reading accuracy) and comprehension — and found that synthetic phonics was the most effective method of instruction, especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds or with language difficulties.
The Simple View model is strongly supported by research from multiple disciplines. UK Schools Minister Nick Gibb was influenced by this research and has relentlessly pursued the adoption of effective reading instruction, firmly believing that reading is key to educational success and social mobility.
Australia had its own review of the teaching of reading — the National Inquiry into Teaching Literacy (NITL) — the report of which was published in 2005. Its findings were remarkably similar to the Rose Review.
Yet it has had very little impact on reading instruction in Australia. Instead of citing the recent scientific research of Professors Maggie Snowling, Kate Nation, Anne Castles, or Charles Hulme, our Australian literacy academics drag out the outdated, unsubstantiated socio-theoretical views of Ken Goodman and Stephen Krashen.
Australia has many outstanding teachers of reading, but they are too often swimming upstream against poor quality reading programs and policy. Australian teachers and students deserve better.
And if you don't think the protests are 'vociferous', then listen to Alan Jones's radio interview with Jennifer about the phonics check - demonstrating utterly disgraceful conduct for an interviewer:
Despite some claims to the contrary, the Phonics Check is not NAPLAN for six year olds. The check simply involves a child reading aloud a list of 40 words to their teacher, which takes around five minutes. The words they read are specifically selected to allow the child’s phonic decoding skills to be assessed.
Unlike NAPLAN, teachers have the results of the check immediately. It is not onerous or stressful, it is in no sense ‘high stakes’ and Senator Birmingham has explicitly ruled out publication of results on My School.
The Phonics Check offers Australia the chance to emulate the success of England, where it has seen the proportion of children achieving at the expected standard on the check improve markedly from 58 per cent in 2012 to 81 per cent in 2017.
A major evaluation commissioned by the UK Department for Education found that teachers had changed their phonics teaching practice to more closely align with the evidence base in response to the results of the Check.
There has also been an improvement in the proportion of children achieving at the expected standard in Year 2 reading tests, after more than a decade of stagnant achievement levels in those tests.
