INSIGHTS

The problems with education in Australia are not new. When the first major Commonwealth government report on school quality (the ‘Karmel report) was published in 1985, there was no testing program for literacy and numeracy but employers were of the view that the basic skill levels of many school leavers were low

As greater consensus has been reached about how to teach children to decode and read words fluently, the focus of discussion among practitioners and researchers has shifted to reading comprehension.

In September, the Productivity Commission released an Interim Report from its Inquiry into the National School Reform Agreement (NSRA). The NSRA is “a joint agreement between the Commonwealth, states and territories to lift student outcomes across Australian schools.

The Next Steps report prepared by the Quality Initial Teacher Education review panel was finally released last week after a three month wait. It hits

When the draft of the revised Australian Curriculum was released for consultation last year, the response was swift and emphatic from hundreds of reading scientists

There are few things more disheartening in my work life than having to spend precious time unpicking and rebutting the destructive work of high status

Well before the sparkling new Australian Curriculum 9.0 endorsed replacing predictable texts with decodable texts in early years classrooms, demand had begun to grow for decodable books.