We need to ensure the best scientific research in play-based learning and early reading is leveraged, and teachers receive supports to meet children’s developmental and academic needs.
Early intervention with reading challenges has very high success rates for supporting reading development, but it is much more difficult to improve reading skills in older students.
The results of an international study into reading skills offer reason for optimism for Australian students. But tragically, too many children are still being left behind.
There is a chasm between the research knowledge base about reading literacy and teachers’ classroom practices. Standardisation could be a big part of the solution.
A new batch of Australian five-year-olds has just started school, eager to learn to read and write. Unfortunately for them, English has one of the most difficult spelling systems of any language, thanks…
Senior Research Fellow, The Centre for Independent Studies; Associate Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University