Does Australia have a literacy problem

1
Does Australia have a literacy problem?

• 1. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reviewed
  literacy levels in Australia in 2006 and
  concluded that 52 of Australians aged 15-19 had
  a literacy level that was insufficient to meet
  the complex demands of everyday life and work.
• Literacy levels had fallen since the previous
  survey in 1996.

2
Does Australia have a literacy problem?

• 2. Literacy levels of Australian children were
  measured in the OECDs international PISA testing
  rounds of 2000 and 2006.
• Between 2000 and 2006 Australia dropped 4 places
  in the international rankings of literacy levels,
  being overtaken by New Zealand, Hong Kong, South
  Korea and Canada.

3
Does Australia have a literacy problem?

• 3. The Australian newspaper reported on November
  11 2009 that COAG (Committee of Australian
  Governments) had determined this year that 43.5
  of Australians had literacy levels below the
  minimum levels required to meet the complex
  demands of work and life in modern economies.

4
Why does Australia have a literacy problem?

• The National Inquiry into the Teaching of
  Reading, commissioned by the Federal Minister for
  Education (then Brendan Nelson) in 2005, reported
  that
• 50 of the 34 teacher training programs in
  Australia devoted less than 5 of the curriculum
  to teaching about reading.
• 60 of senior teachers considered the the
  majority of beginning teachers were not equipped
  to teach children to read.
• The majority of beginning teachers reported
  that they were not confident about their ability
  to teach reading.
• Many beginning teachers themselves lacked
  literacy, and also lacked the metalinguistic
  skills needed for the teaching of reading.

5
Is anything being done about Australias literacy
problem?

• Yes.
• The National Curriculum Board (now called
  ACARA), chaired by Professor Barry McGaw, is
  redesigning the syllabus for the teaching of
  reading in kindergarten and the early grades.
• Bill Shorten, the Parliamentary
  Under-secretary for Disabilities, has established
  a working party to make recommendations to him re
  what should be done about dyslexia in Australia.

6
Two groups of children who struggle to learn to
read

• The instructional casualties
• The dyslexics

7
Two groups of children who struggle to learn to
read

• The instructional casualties.
• These are the children who would have learned to
  read without
• much difficulty if the classroom instruction had
  been evidence-based and systematic, and included
  systematic explicit phonics at the beginning.
• The dyslexics

8
Two groups of children who struggle to learn to
read

• The instructional casualties.
• These are the children who would have learned to
  read without
• much difficulty if the classroom instruction had
  been evidence-based and systematic, and included
  systematic explicit phonics at the beginning.
• The dyslexics
• Best-practice classroom instruction is not enough
  for them. They need something extra. Some may
  never learn to read?

9
The new English Curriculum

• Finalized mid-2010 with implementation from
  2011
• Phonics and phonemic awareness in initial
  teaching of reading
• Grammar through the years of the curriculum

10
The new English Curriculum

• Phonological awareness, phonics and the alphabet
• K rhyme, syllabification, alphabet, read CVC
  words and some high frequency irregular words by
  sight.
• Year 1 match all of the letters of the
  alphabet with sounds, manipulate sounds including
  phoneme deletion and substitution recognise and
  write consonant digraphs letter combinations
  (grapheme/phoneme correspondences)
• Spelling
• Year 1 use relationship between letters and
  sounds when spelling
• Punctuation and layout
• Year 1 ? and !, commas in lists, inverted
  commas
• Year 2 apostrophes to indicate contractions
  and possession

11
Two groups of children who struggle to learn to
read

• The instructional casualties this group will
  shrink greatly if the new curriculum is actually
  taken up in kindergarten and Year 1 across the
  country.
• The dyslexics the new curriculum wont be a
  great help to them.