Effective Teaching news, commentary and analysis
EducationHQ
Ditching balanced literacy: why Victoria’s secondary teachers should be cheering
Last week’s announcement by Education Minister Ben Carroll that Victorian primary schools will shift to a structured approach to teaching literacy using phonics in F-2 from next year has given secondary teachers reason both to hope and cheer. This is because children reading well in the early years is going to make secondary teachers’ jobs easier. Reading is a foundational skill for school. It’s vital that students get off to a strong start in reading, otherwise they risk falling further and further behind throughout school.
25 June 2024
The Educator
Why early intervention is key in lifting maths outcomes
Too many Australian students struggle with maths and aren’t identified early enough or accurately enough, according to new research. Lead researcher, Kelly Norris, says early intervention is possible but requires the support of efficient, informative, accurate, and universal screening of core numeracy skills in Year 1.
25 June 2024
The Educator
How these NSW teachers are empowering Indigenous youth
TAFE NSW is up-skilling Indigenous Australians in remote and regional areas as Student Learning Support Officers and Aboriginal Education Officers, aiming to improve learning outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Experts have highlighted the need for tailored support, cultural safety, and enhanced educational and employment opportunities to make any meaningful difference in improving outcomes for Indigenous students.
21 June 2024
ACT Government
Strengthening literacy and numeracy education in ACT public schools
A new suite of system-wide literacy and numeracy initiatives – called Strong Foundations – will ensure all students at ACT public schools have access to evidence-informed and consistent teaching practices in every classroom, common assessments, including a year 1 phonics test, advice and resources for parents, to support their children with literacy and numeracy, and multitiered systems of support for students in every public school.
20 June 2024
The Sydney Morning Herald
Numeracy in schools doesn’t add up. Here’s how experts would solve the problem
The Grattan Institute Education Program Director, Jordana Hunter, highlights how numeracy performance has flatlined in the past decade and improving primary school outcomes is key to lifting achievement for older students. According to Dr Katherin Cartwright, President of the Mathematical Association of New South Wales and a former primary school teacher, there is a lack of consistency across Australia and access to national data for our younger students.
20 June 2024
ABC Education
One in four Victorian students can’t read proficiently, but the state government is taking action
One in four Victorian school students can’t read proficiently but the state government is finally taking action. Victorian Minister for Education Ben Carroll has just announced that all government primary schools will be required to teach children in Prep to Year 2 how to read according to the best evidence on effective instruction.
18 June 2024
The Educator
Why Victorian schools are going all in with phonics
Under the updated Victorian Teaching and Learning Model, to be implemented from Term 1 in 2025, all students from Prep to Grade 2 will be taught using a systematic synthetic phonics approach as part of their reading programs, with a minimum of 25 minutes daily explicit teaching of phonics and phonemic awareness. At the core of the plan is a stronger focus on explicit teaching, which has been shown by research to be the best approach for the largest number of students.
18 June 2024
The Courier
Going back to basics: why phonics will teach more children how to read
Starting from 2025, Prep to Year 2 students will learn to read using the back-to-basics phonics approach where they will learn to ‘decode’ the sounds that different letters make, as part of a new explicit teaching approach which is to be rolled out across all Victorian public schools.
14 June 2024
The Age
The way children are taught to read in Victoria is about to change
Students from Prep to Year 2 will be taught using structured phonics as part of a new explicit teaching approach to be rolled out across all Victorian public schools.
13 June 2024
The Educator
What does Australia’s education system need to do differently?
An analysis of what can be done different for Australia’s education system, considering Australian 15-year-olds rank ninth in the world for reading and science and 10th in the world for maths, but almost half still failed to reach national standards in those subjects.
7 June 2024
EducationHQ News
Teachers need evidence-based training if they are to be effective in the classroom
Lack of evidence-based content is the reason behind the significant gaps between existing Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs and the skills and knowledge required to be an effective teacher, analysis says.
5 June 2024
The Educator
How teachers can make Australia more equitable
A new report brings to light that Australia has one of the most unequal education systems among the OECD nations, highlighting the critical role teachers play in giving young people the tools to improve their academic and life outcomes. The achievement gap between children from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds is equivalent to two years of learning by Year 5, an issue that impacts not just the academic progress of young people, but also their post-school opportunities.
3 June 2024
National Indigenous Times
Chloe Allen: on a mission to close the education gap
Effective literacy instruction helps all students reach their potential. Read up on how Chloe Allen, an Awabakal and Dunghutti woman who grew up in the Northern Rivers on Bundjalung Country, is working to close the education gap.
3 June 2024
The Sydney Morning Herald
NSW education: doubled its NAPLAN high achievers. Now its techniques are spreading
Read up on how schools in New South Wales are doubling their NAPLAN high achievers with direct and explicit instruction.
3 June 2024
EducationHQ
Australian teachers need a robust quality-assurance process for curriculum materials
Teachers at Australian schools require curriculum materials that reflect the growing evidence-base for effective teaching practices, such as explicit instruction, mastery learning, and formative assessment.
21 May 2024
7 News
Hundreds of Victorian schools are going back to basics
Hundreds of Victorian schools are turning back time and reverting to past methods of teaching. After decades of declining results, the back-to-basics move is paying off for young students.
20 May 2024
EducationHQ
‘Twenty years overdue’: ACT public schools shift to evidence-based instruction
The ACT Government has backed an expert panel’s call to dismantle its ‘highly autonomous’ public school system and implement a system-wide shift to literacy and numeracy instruction that aligns with the science – but one expert says the messaging for teachers and school leaders remains somewhat cloudy.
8 May 2024
Yahoo Lifestyle
We asked 900 Australian teachers if evidence informs how they teach – and found most use it, but there are key gaps
In a survey of more than 900 teachers from across each state and territory for an Australian Education Research Organisation (AER0), results found that most teachers surveyed said they were using evidence-based practices most of the time, but they were not using all the strategies that make those practices effective. This has serious impacts on student learning.
7 May 2024
EducationHQ
‘We need to go back to teacher-led explicit instruction’: maths expert
Dr Tanya Evans, head of the Mathematics Education Unit at the University of Auckland, argues that promotion of inquiry-based and problem-based learning needs to stop, and that schools need to go back to teacher-led explicit instruction.
1 May 2024
Daily Mail Australia
Explicit teaching returns to NSW classrooms as schools abandon progressive model
Explicit teaching model was rolled out during term two in NSW, sparking anger among some teachers and parents. However, education authorities say it is needed to give under-privileged children an equal chance to learn.
1 May 2024
The Australian
Indigenous ‘carve out’: Is this a return to the ‘reading wars’?
All non-Indigenous trainee teachers must pass a test known as LANTITE (Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education students) during the first year of their degree. Indigneous trainee teachers can demonstrate proficiency in an Indigenous language instead. Janet Albrechtsen considers if different standards for Indigenous trainee teachers risk reinforcing the curse of low expectations for these teachers and their students alike.
1 May 2024
The Australian
High school students are ditching maths subjects
AMSI analysis showing high school students are ditching high-level maths subjects follows new rules revealed last week that all trainee teachers will be taught to use explicit instruction – a practical step-by-step teaching method embraced by NSW and Western Australia and championed by Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson.
30 April 2024
The Australian
Bipartisanship delivers a lesson worth learning
Conceived by the Coalition and delivered by Labor, fundamental reforms to teacher training prove the power of bipartisanship. Reforms to teaching degrees mean they teach how to teach children to read, and to teach using the logical step-by-step method known as “explicit instruction’’.
26 April 2024
The Australian
Universities to raise bar on entry rules for trainee teachers
Universities will be forced to raise the bar for enrolment in education degrees, with trainee teachers taught to use explicit instruction, and Indigenous trainee teachers will be exempted from tough new entry rules for university and be tested on Aboriginal language ability instead, in a bid to bolster the First Nations teaching workforce.
26 April 2024
ABC News
Teachers once feared working at Cessnock High, now it’s a model for best practice
Using Newcastle University’s “Quality Teaching Rounds” model, Cessnock High, a regional NSW high school that teachers once feared working at has gone through an incredible transformation.
14 April 2024
The Conversation
It’s common to ‘stream’ maths classes. But grouping students by ability can lead to ‘massive disadvantage’.
The author dissects and discusses the negative impacts of streaming classes, especially with subject like maths, on disadvantaged students.
12 April 2024
The Conversation
We have a new way of looking at data that shows what’s working for Indigenous school kids and what isn’t
A new way of analysing NAPLAN data that compares Indigenous students with other Indigenous students in order to get more nuanced information about what is working and where is underdevelopment.
10 April 2024
EducationHQ
Evidence-aligned reading framework charts path to ‘near zero’ illiteracy in secondary schools
The Reading Pledge – an initiative by MulitLit’s Five from Five and Learning Difficulties Australia uses data from the Phonics Screening Check and NAPLAN, to device a systematic approach to assessment and intervention so that most students are able to read well by the time they finish primary school.
3 April 2024
ABC News
How back to basics literacy and numeracy teaching transformed a struggling public school
When Manisha Gazula started teaching at one of Australia’s most disadvantaged schools, nine in 10 students were moving on to high school with sub-par reading skills. Now the students are outperforming the “good schools” and “punching above their weight”.She credit the transformation to abandoning ‘fashionable’ teaching practices like whole language for explicit teaching.
26 March 2024
ABC – 7.30
How one school transformed its maths and reading results
One third of Australian school students can’t read properly – a statistic experts are increasingly blaming on outdated teaching methods. An increasing number of schools are changing their teaching styles and a public school in Sydney’s outer west is leading the way.
25 March 2024
Sydney Morning Herald
Schools have been ordered to use this teaching method. Will staff comply?
After decades of the reading wars, another ideological culture battle is set to ignite when teachers return from their school holidays.
21 April 2024
The Educator
NAPLAN writing top performers share a common approach – explicit instruction
With report after report of Australian students falling behind in writing, how is it that some schools are bucking the trend? What are they doing differently to help students outperform their peers in NAPLAN writing results? One common theme is clear: the implementation of explicit, practical writing instruction that’s based on best practice.
11 March 2024
2GB
Why we’re reverting from ‘inquiry-based’ teaching back to old school ‘explicit’ teaching
Murat Dizdar, Secretary NSW Department of Education, discusses latest research showing that students benefit from ‘explicit’ teaching practices which involve teachers clearly showing students what to do and how to do it, rather than having students discover that information themselves.
02 March 2024
The teaching style behind the state’s top performing schools
High school students who are taught using explicit instruction are months ahead in reading and maths compared with peers who are not.
01 March 2024
The Age
Students the losers in reading lessons that fail to flag learning issues
Victorian parents are spending thousands on tutors and specialists while students are falling year behind, as outdated reading lessons fail.
25 February 2024
The Educator
Evidence-based teaching drives stronger reading outcomes – research
A recent report by the Grattan Institute found one third of Australian children cannot read proficiently, calling for an overhaul in reading instruction and the need for “a systematic, evidence-based curriculum”. What’s needed, say the experts, is a curriculum that focuses on phonemic awareness, phonics, and comprehension. They argue that reading, a critical skill for lifelong learning and empathy, requires explicit teaching, challenging the belief that children learn to read naturally.
23 February 2024
The Educator
The critical role of teacher upskilling in reversing the literacy slump
Last week, a report from the Grattan Institute revealed that one-third of young people in Australia cannot read proficiently, warning that this issue is costing the country $40bn over those students’ lifetimes.
22 February 2024
The Age
The big change coming to the way Catholic school kids are taught
Catholic schools are adopting a teaching philosophy that is not mandated in Victoria’s public schools…
22 February 2024
EducationHQ
Education policymakers need to get clear on the science of learning
Implementing the science of learning at scale will require a combination of top-down (system-driven) reforms and bottom-up (school and teacher-led) actions.
22 February 2024
The Australian
Rote learning adds up to success, says CIS report
Rote learning and explicit instruction are the key to children mastering the basics of reading and mathematics, a new report reveals. The Centre for Independent Studies has criticised universities for failing to train student teachers in the most effective ways to help children learn. “Myths must be busted to help build all teachers’ understanding of the science of learning,’’ the CIS report states.
21 February 2024
ABC News
Education experts break down the best ways to teach children how to read
A Grattan Institute report earlier this week found one-third of students are failing to learn to read proficiently due to persistence with an older, discredited way of teaching. The report urged schools to abandon the “whole language” method of teaching kids to read, in favour of the evidence-based “structured literacy”.
18 February 2024
ABC News
The teaching change this school made that supercharged its students’ reading skills
A reading revolution at a small, disadvantaged public school in regional Victoria could provide the blueprint for turning around alarming literacy rates in Australia’s 10,000 primary schools. Churchill Primary, about two hours south-east of Melbourne, has twice the number of students in the lowest socio-educational advantage bracket as the national average. The game-changing move for the school was switching to a style of teaching known as “structured literacy”, which is anchored in phonics and involves breaking all the key components of reading into lessons taught explicitly to students.
13 February 2024
ABC Education
What does and doesn’t work when it comes to maths anxiety?
Intervention research shows the best bet to meaningfully address maths anxiety is through direct instruction, particularly in intensive dosages in small-group settings. Addressing the growing prevalence and impact of maths anxiety will be important to turning around Australia’s generally declining and disappointing maths outcomes of recent decades.
25 January 2024
The West Australian
Hopping mad over outdated teaching
MultiLit released a checklist to help parents find out if their school is using effective instruction. Catholic Education WA has been criticized for mandating the use of Running Records which is on the list as inaccurate assessment tools.
22 January 2024
Sky News Australia
Australia can fix its ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ curriculum by ditching complacency, experimental methods that have churned out tanking NAPLAN results
Student centered approaches have led to chaos. A La Trobe Valley school; introduced explicit instruction and “The results were nothing short of miraculous. In just a year, NAPLAN scores improved drastically, and five years later, the school is outperforming its counterparts and the national average – an impressive feat considering the socio-economic challenges faced by its student body.”
07 January 2024
The Australian
The success of education reform depends on choices we make now – The Australian
Explicit instruction and teacher training as crucial factors influencing the success of an educational program.
16 December 2023
The Australian
Content reboot for teacher training
Reforms ordered by the nations education ministers include explicit instruction becoming mandatory in teaching degrees. Trainee teachers must also learn how children’s brains develop through early childhood to the teenage years so as to understand how students learn best at different ages. They will be instructed to avoid the trend of “self-directed learning’’ for students who are learning a new concept or subject
12 December 2023
The Guardian
Schools funding and reforms panel: five key takeaways
One of the takeaways is ‘screening student progress’ including a universal phonics check in year 1, with targeted programs like small group or individual catch-up tutoring to be offered to children failing to meet standards.
12 December 2023
Queensland Government Media Statement
Queensland turns the page on reading in schools
Queensland state schools are set to take a consistent statewide approach to teaching reading that reflects the latest research and has a strengthened focus on phonics.
23 October 2023
Sydney Morning Herald
Education boss calls for doubling down on explicit teaching in schools
The head of the NSW public education system has called on schools to double down on the use of explicit instruction – a teaching method that gives students step-by-step and clear instructions – in a bid to boost results and close the stark achievement gap. Murat Dizdar, who was appointed secretary of the NSW Education Department in June, told the Herald that evidence shows schools using explicit teaching practices have the most sustained improvements in academic outcomes.
23 October 2023
The Australian
Poor reading and writing skills are dooming students to failure in high school and university, eminent scientist warns
One of Australia’s most eminent scientists, Alan Finkel, has blasted a lack of basic literacy for sabotaging students’ success in high school and university, as damning new data reveals that failed teaching methods could cost a generation of children $12 billion in lifetime earnings.
11 September 2022
ABC News
A reading revolution is underway in many Australian schools but classes are still a ‘lottery’ for parents
Children attending schools that do not use explicit teaching are known as ‘instructional casualties’ by advocates of structured, explicit literacy. The evidence clearly backs the explicit instruction of phonics and that reading, unlike speaking, must be taught. Many states now mandate explicit teaching.
10 September 2023
EducationHQ
Henderson labels Oz standards ‘embarrassing’, advocates explicit teaching mandate
Shadow Education Minister Sarah Henderson has deemed the latest NAPLAN results “a national embarrassment” and called on the Government to urgently mandate explicit teaching in every Australian classroom.
06 September 2023
Sydney Morning Herald
The ‘secret recipe’ that helped transform results at this Sydney school
Radical changes to teaching methods and lesson structure has helped create calmer classrooms and boost results.
04 September 2023
RiotACT
Catholic schools show way as new ‘explicit teaching’ approach reaps NAPLAN rewards
Three years ago, Catholic Education Canberra Goulburn embarked on a learning revolution through its catalyst program, adopting the explicit or direct teaching method based on brain science as its primary educational approach. Its NAPLAN results are higher than national averages.
24 August 2023
ABC News
How a more explicit teaching style helped this school defy NAPLAN struggles elsewhere
Ms Hassan is a teacher at Auburn’s Sydney Adventist School, in the city’s west, where staff have been trained to focus on direct, explicit instruction informed by the latest science on the way kids’ brains work. The school’s education model also emphasises strong classroom management, with teachers aiming to engage the entire class in a task every two minutes. These methods are what Ms Hassan and Ms Efstratiou credit as helping the school turn around its NAPLAN results, which are now well above average in numeracy and literacy.
24 August 2023
Canberra Times
NAPLAN 2023 results proves science of reading, explicit teaching works, St Peter and Paul Primary School principal Cameron Johns says
New NAPLAN results have proved the value of explicit instruction, a Canberra principal says.
22 August 2023
ABC News
How to keep teachers and improve learning
A new way of teaching in the classroom is being adopted in some schools, with a focus on how young brains absorb knowledge. But is this the revolution in teaching that its proponents suggest? Includes interview with Canberra Goulburn on the Catalyst program.
14 July 2023
The Australian
One in three teachers needs training to teach children to read and write, new study reveals
Edith Cowan University researchers have discovered that the time dedicated to the explicit teaching of writing in primary school each week varied from 15 minutes to 7½ hours. Literacy specialist Jennifer Buckingham, director of strategy at MultiLit, said writing needed to be taught explicitly for at least half an hour a day in primary school. “It should be taught in the context of learning other curriculum areas so it is integrated with knowledge building,’’ she said. “This means students will eventually spend several hours each day doing writing of some kind.’’
14 July 2023
ABC News
Universities given two years to overhaul teaching degrees after education ministers’ meeting
Ross Fox, the Director of Catholic Education Canberra Goulburn, said he realised standard teaching methods were not working – and wanted to make dramatic changes across the more than 50 schools he oversaw. Mr Fox decided the problem was the way his staff were taught at university and moved to retrain his entire teaching workforce of 1,500 in what’s called the “science of learning”. It emphasises direct, explicit instruction tailored to young brains with the teacher ensuring a tight, disciplined classroom.
07 July 2023
The Age
Department blocks ‘good news story’ on schools’ reading transformation
Victoria’s education department blocked the publication of a taxpayer-funded study into six primary schools that changed their approach to teaching reading and improved their results. The report, which The Age has obtained in redacted form, studied six government schools that dumped entrenched strategies for teaching reading for an intensively structured approach centered on explicit direction of young students using phonics. The schools transformed their approach to literacy to address plateaued or declining results, and are now reporting gains in students’ outcomes, the study found. It also observed that each school made the transformation without guidance from the Department of Education, with change often being driven by one individual within the school.
25 June 2023
Sydney Morning Herald
‘We changed everything’: How 56 schools transformed their teaching and boosted results
56 Catholic schools in NSW and the ACT that have embraced “high-impact” explicit instruction, an approach partly embedded in old-school teaching methods. It shuns student-led and inquiry-based learning in favour of a direct, traditional instruction style. After 2 years, these schools are showing statistically significant improvement in NAPLAN.
04 December 2022
Sydney Morning Herald
How one Sydney school turned around its reading and maths results
Since 2016, the Liverpool primary school (1 in 5 students are refugees) has had a curriculum plan known as the “core program” that involves “explicitly teaching every component of reading, writing and maths” in a bid to turn around students’ stagnating academic results. The school is making above average NAPLAN progress.
27 October 2022
Sydney Morning Herald
Schools need shared lesson plans for teachers to stop learning ‘lottery’
Report by Grattan Institute recommends teachers need access to high quality curriculum materials featuring explicit teaching to reduce workload and boost results.
16 October 2022
The Age
‘Results came really quickly’: How one tiny Victorian school turned literacy around
Churchill Primary, a small, disadvantaged school in the Latrobe Valley had persisted for years with an approach known as balanced literacy, with its mix of levelled readers and traditional children’s storybooks as reading tools, but achieved stubbornly poor results. Tired of seeing so many children leave the school with low literacy, principal Jacquie Burrows abandoned balanced literacy for a “purist” phonics-based approach. What followed was a remarkable turnaround in the school’s NAPLAN data.
16 February 2022
ABC News
‘He will get that intervention and that explicit instruction that he needs and hasn’t been able to get here in Tasmania’: Lisa Denny
Tasmanian academic says she’s been left with no choice but to leave the state so that her 11-year old son Rory can access the education he deserves. Queensland school offers needs-based learning, including smaller class sizes and a speech and language pathologist in every classroom.
14 December 2020
Sydney Morning Herald
The reading wars are over – and phonics has won
Authored by the NSW Minister for Education, arguing the reading wars are bizarre because the evidence behind how reading should be taught is so one-sided. Overwhelmingly it tells us that phonics must be explicitly and systematically taught within a literacy program that also develops language and reading habits.
30 November 2020