Equity Economics Report
Raising the grade: How schools in the Australian Capital Territory can lift literacy outcomes for students and the economy
A new report by Equity Economics, in collaboration with the Snow Foundation and the ACT Alliance for Evidence-Based Education has found that children in ACT classrooms are not being taught to read in a way that aligns with the science and research on literacy instruction.
Investing $11 million in 2023-24 in an evidence-based literacy reform package will lead to students in the ACT earning an additional $198 million over their lifetimes – about 18 times the cost of the package. Canberra’s economy demands a more educated workforce, and reading proficiency is the key.
If we want to ensure that children are exposed to high-quality literacy instruction, the ACT Government needs to invest in five key areas:.
All primary schools in Canberra need to invest in adopting the latest version of the Australian Curriculum. The Curriculum was changed last year and requires schools to stop teaching children who are learning to read to guess words and instead teach them to sound out words. This is not a simple change, it requires an investment in new classroom materials and in the decodable books beginner readers use.
Principals need training and support to lead the cultural change required within schools to move from long-held teaching practices and beliefs. Teachers need professional development and coaching in high-quality, research-backed explicit, systematic, and sequential reading instruction.
The ACT needs to implement the Year 1 Phonics Check to identify students who require additional support in learning early and before they fall behind. The ACT is one of the last three jurisdictions in Australia to announce support for the Year 1 Phonics check and this means it is a lottery about whether children who are struggling to learn to read get identified early enough to provide effective intervention. Other age-normed screening tools should be used to identify children in other years who are struggling.
Small group tutoring and one-on-one support needs to be provided to students who are falling behind so that they can catch up with their classmates.
Universities need to train pre-service teachers in the skills required for reading. At the moment pre-service teachers are being exposed to a range of reading strategies, some are informed by science and others are informed by ideology.
Other Critical Reports
The 2023/24 Inquiry into literacy and numeracy in ACT public schools - The Final Report provides the ACT Government with 8 future-focused key recommendations to strengthen literacy and numeracy outcomes for all ACT public school students, with a particular focus on equity. The ACT Government has accepted all 8 recommendations in-principle. The Final Report, Executive Summary and Community Summary can be viewed here: Literacy and Numeracy Education Expert Panel. (2024). Achieving equity and excellence through evidence-informed consistency – Final Report of the ACT Government’s Literacy and Numeracy Education Expert Panel. ACT Government.
A Grattan Institute report was published in February 2024 titled, The Reading Guarantee: How to give every child the best chance of success Hunter J., Stobart A., Amy Haywood A,. This report states that Australia has a reading problem and that a third of Australian children cannot read proficiently. It provides clear recommendations, including a request that all state and territory governments, and Catholic and independent school sector leaders, commit to a six-step ‘Reading Guarantee.
In October 2023, a coalition of literacy experts representing a movement of education reform wrote an open letter calling on Australian governments to ensure all Australian children thrive academically and that no child is left behind, regardless of their starting point The National School Reform Agreement Open Letter states that the new Agreement be grounded in the most contemporary evidence on how to improve literacy outcomes, be aspirational about what can be achieved and disciplined in implementation across the following six policy reform initiatives:
Reading Targets
Teacher education and professional development
Teaching standards
Evidence benchmarks
Screening and progress monitoring
Intervention
A 2023 national study into Australia’s literacy standards by Equity Economics which was commissioned by Code Read Dyslexia Network Australia, has found that four in ten 15-year-old students are not meeting reading benchmarks. The cost of lost lifetime earnings for those who fall behind is estimated at over $12 billion alone. The report, Saving Money by Spending: Solving Illiteracy in Australia, makes five recommendations:
Implementing a high-quality evidence-based curriculum for early literacy instruction
Training and coaching for teachers in explicit and structured literacy instruction
National implementation of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check
Small group tutoring and one-on-one intervention for those students who require support
Adopting targets to reduce the proportion of students who do not meet basic levels of literacy.
A 2018 state-by-state report card from the Grattan Institute found the ACT was trailing the nation in student learning progress, Goss, P., Sonnemann, J., and Emslie, O. (2018). Measuring student progress: A state-by-state report card. Grattan Institute
2018 analysis by the ANU found there was systemic underperformance in the ACT across all socio-economic groups. A Macintosh and D Wilkinson, Academic underperformance in ACT schools: An analysis of ACT school performance in NAPLAN over the period 2012 to 2016 (The Australian National University, ANU Law School Working Paper, 2018).
A 2017 analysis of the NAPLAN performance of ACT schools discussing socio-economic advantage. A Macintosh, D Wilkinson & A Constable, Leading the Nation? The NAPLAN performance of the ACT’s high socio-economic schools. Policy Brief. The Australia Institute.
A 2017 Auditor-General’s Report on performance information in ACT public schools noted that ACT public schools are performing below similar schools in other jurisdictions despite expenditure on a per-student basis for public schools being one of the highest in the country. Multiple reviews of ACT public schools since 2014 have identified shortcomings in ACT schools in their analysis of student performance information and their use of data to inform educational practice. ACT Auditor-General’s Report Performance Information in ACT Public Schools Report No.4 / 2017
A 2016 report prepared for the ACT Education Directorate by the Centre for International Research on Education Systems, Victoria University on government school performance in the ACT shows that after taking account of intake and context differences, ACT public schools on average achieve negative results on every measure. Centre for International Research on Education Systems. Government School Performance in the ACT Analysis Paper prepared by Stephen Lamb for the ACT Education Directorate (redacted).
In 2013 the Final Report from the Taskforce on Students with Learning Difficulties was provided to the then ACT Minister for Education, Ms Joy Burch. The Taskforce report presented three key messages:
1. a consistent systematic approach to learning difficulties,
2. building the capacity of staff in the area of learning difficulties, and
3. partnerships with families in supporting students with learning difficulties.
The recommendations emphasised the need for all teachers and school leaders to develop understanding and knowledge to meet the needs of all students with learning difficulties. The Minister accepted all of the report's recommendations.
National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (Australia) 2005 report: The Inquiry aimed to review recent literacy teaching research, evaluate teacher training approaches, and assess how research can inform classroom teaching and support learning. It also examined assessment methods for early reading learning and produced a report with best practices for literacy teaching and learning.
Other International Critical Reports
The 2022 report from the Ontario Human Rights Commission's, Right to Read inquiry emphasises that the ability to read is not a privilege, but rather a fundamental and essential human right. The report contains 157 recommendations for the Ministry of Education, school boards, and faculties of education on how to tackle the systemic problems that impact the right to learn how to read.
The Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading (UK) 2006, also known as the Rose Report: This report identified five competencies for successful reading: recognising letters, sounding out phonemes, blending phonemes, reading phonically regular and some irregular words. The report recommended using synthetic phonics as the most effective approach for teaching reading to young pupils.
The National Reading Panel Report (USA) 2000: This report summarises the National Reading Panel's findings on evidence-based reading research, formed by Congress and led by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to understand effective reading instruction. The panel led to the Partnership for Reading, which aims to bring the research findings to those interested in helping people learn to read well.