tag:theconversation.com,2011:/columns/misty-adoniou-107235The School House – The Conversation2017-10-01T23:44:33Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/834182017-10-01T23:44:33Z2017-10-01T23:44:33ZDecoration or distraction: the aesthetics of classrooms matter, but learning matters more<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188279/original/file-20171001-8620-1qnwq8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A primary function of school displays should be to allow children to see their own work around the classroom and school walls.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a recent holiday to Greece, my 30-year-old daughter took a trip down memory lane and visited her old primary school. She posted a photo to Instagram captioned:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It might look like a jail but at least the view was good. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The view from the classrooms across the bay to the mountains beyond is indeed mesmerising, but the building does look like a grim correctional facility.</p>
<p>We had moved to Greece, from Australia, when she was in Year 4. Her new primary school, with its bare walls and single desks bolted in rows to the cold marble floors, was a shock to both of us. </p>
<p>Where were the soft carpets, bright tote trays and clever tessellating tables? Where were the decorated walls, displays of children’s work and carefully constructed charts with reminders of class birthdays and times tables? </p>
<p>What an uninviting learning space, I thought.</p>
<h2>Do the aesthetics of our learning environments matter?</h2>
<p><a href="http://usir.salford.ac.uk/33995/">A comprehensive UK research study</a> attempted the complex task of identifying the effects of the built learning space on student learning in primary schools. </p>
<p>They found that natural light - but not direct sunlight - and good air quality were by far the most significant factors correlated with high student learning outcomes. </p>
<p>Next on the list were individualised classrooms. For example, having the right sized chairs and desks for the children in the class, and the flexibility to change the layout for different learning activities. </p>
<p>So far, so predictable. Perhaps more surprising is the finding that classrooms with too much colour and too many display items, have a negative effect on learning outcomes. They also found that classrooms with no colour and no display items correlated with low learning outcomes. </p>
<h2>Decoration or distraction</h2>
<p>I was one of those teachers who devoted my weekends and afternoons to transforming my classroom into an underwater wonderland, a castle, a spaceship. This usually involved a lot of fishing nets, cardboard boxes and visits to the “crazy cheap reject” shop. </p>
<p>Frankly, it was difficult for an adult to walk upright in my classroom. I’d even cover the windows with “atmospheric” coloured cellophane. So much for natural light.</p>
<p>It was fun. It was time-consuming. It was <a href="https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/exclusive-teachers-are-spending-hundreds-pounds-a-year-classroom?utm_content=bufferc19f3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer">a drain on my financial resources</a>. And with the benefit of hindsight and the research evidence, there wasn’t much educational benefit to my students. </p>
<p>Highly-decorated classrooms are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28471220">more of a distraction than an aid to learning</a>. This has been found to be particularly so for children in the early primary years, and children with special learning needs. </p>
<p>The older the children, the less prone to distraction they are. So it is perhaps ironic that it is our early childhood classrooms that tend to be over stimulating, whilst our high school classroom walls usually offer no stimulation at all. We need a happy compromise.</p>
<h2>Window dressing</h2>
<p>Displays in schools send <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17457820701547450">a message about the school’s values</a> - sometimes overtly, and sometimes covertly.</p>
<p>As a very frequent visitor to schools, the displays in the public common spaces of the school do give me an initial “read” on the school. The child constructed messages of hope and diversity on the hall walls of one primary school made me feel I was with kindred spirits. </p>
<p>By contrast, the commercially-printed “welcome” stickers in a dozen languages on the front door of another school, where the Greek version was upside down, made me wonder how genuine their commitment to embracing diversity really was.</p>
<p>Schools should consider carefully the messages being sent by their public displays - not just their content but their intent. </p>
<h2>Celebrating students and their learning.</h2>
<p>The displays children actually notice and interact with most of all are those of their own work. It makes them feel proud, part of the school community and <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17457820701547450">a legitimate player in the school’s story</a>.
They are, however, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004277808558889?journalCode=rett20">not that interested in anyone else’s work</a>.</p>
<p>So a primary function of school displays should be to allow children to see their own work around the classroom and school walls. Don’t just choose the “best”, unless of course you are seeking to actively disengage some students from the school’s esprit de corps. </p>
<h2>Reinforcing student learning</h2>
<p>Many classroom displays incorporate commercial or teacher-made reminders of learning - reference lists of commonly used words, or “interesting” adjectives, times-tables, or classroom rules. </p>
<p>However, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28471220">recent observational studies</a> have found the students rarely turn their gaze to those kinds of displays. This reinforces findings from <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004277808558889?journalCode=rett20">older studies</a>, which found most students did not refer to the displays on the walls when given a task to complete, even though the answers to that task were on the wall.</p>
<p>Displays designed to reinforce, remind or support learning should be co-constructed with the students, in the context of learning - not simply appear on the walls after yet another teacher’s weekend sacrificed to the laminating machine. It is the students’ input into the content being displayed that will bring their attention back to it when they need that content for their classroom work.</p>
<h2>Getting it right</h2>
<p>When work is on display, we do need to get it right. That doesn’t mean triple mounting children’s work on coloured cardboard, but it does mean respecting their work enough to hang it straight.</p>
<p>It doesn’t mean buying expensive laminated charts from the shiny catalogues on the staffroom table, but it does mean ensuring that your information - and your spelling - is correct. </p>
<p>A bright classroom that reflects school values, and celebrates children’s learning, is an important part of the teaching and learning puzzle. But a whisper of advice to beginning teachers from someone who has been there and done that - your time is precious. Prioritise lesson planning over classroom decoration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Misty Adoniou works for the University of Canberra. She has received funding from government and non-government organisations to research curriculum, standards and refugee education. She is on the Board of Directors of TESOL International, a voluntary organisation of teachers' associations around the globe. </span></em></p>Schools should carefully consider the messages that are sent by how they have constructed the learning environment.Misty Adoniou, Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/830452017-09-17T22:24:30Z2017-09-17T22:24:30ZNew phonics test will do nothing to improve Australian children’s literacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186300/original/file-20170917-8125-ak244g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Research in England has found that the proposed test was no more accurate than the teacher’s judgement in identifying children with reading difficulties.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Minister Birmingham released a report today recommending that all Year 1 students in Australia complete a phonics test. The panel responsible for the report has recommended that Australia adopt the Year 1 phonics screening check that has been used in England since 2011.</p>
<h2>What is phonics?</h2>
<p>Phonics is the process of matching sounds to letters. It is an important skill when learning to read and write in English. There are two main approaches to teaching children phonics - synthetic phonics and analytic phonics.</p>
<p>Analytic phonics starts with taking a word that children know the meaning of, and then analysing it to see how the sounds in the word match the letters we see within the word. So five-year-old Emma will learn that her name starts with the sound “e” which is represented by the capital letter E, followed by the sound “m” which is represented by the two letters “mm”, and ends with the sound “u”, which is represented by the letter a.</p>
<p>Synthetic phonics starts with letters which the children learn to match with sounds. The meaning of the words are irrelevant, and indeed, inconsequential. The theory is that the children should master letter/sound matches first before trying to attend to meaning.</p>
<h2>Which phonics method is better?</h2>
<p>There is no evidence that one phonics approach is better than the other. In England, the US and Australia, there have been major inquiries into reading and all have concluded that systematic and explicit phonics teaching is a crucial part of effective reading instruction. But none have found any evidence that synthetic phonics approaches are better than analytic phonics approaches, or vice versa. </p>
<p>All inquiries have concluded that whatever phonic instruction method is chosen, it should be one part of a suite of skills children should have when learning to read.</p>
<h2>What is the phonics test?</h2>
<p>The phonics test is based on synthetic phonics. The children are given 40 words on a computer screen, with no context. The words are not put in a sentence, or given any meaning. This is deliberate, and an important feature of a synthetic phonics approach, as the children must show they are not relying on meaning or prior experience with the word in order to successfully decode it. </p>
<p>To this end, 20 of the words the children are given are nonsense words, like “thrand”, “poth” and “froom”, to ensure they are not using meaning to decode the words.</p>
<h2>Why are we introducing it?</h2>
<p>Minister Birmingham is concerned about the numbers of students in Australia who are struggling with literacy. <a href="https://theconversation.com/naplan-results-show-it-isnt-the-basics-that-are-missing-in-australian-education-82113">The decline in literacy standards of Year 9 students is very concerning</a>, and he is right to be looking for solutions. But the solution will not be found in this phonics test for six-year-olds. </p>
<p>As the test has been has already been in use for six years in England we are fortunate to be able to learn from their experience. <a href="https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/yopc03/yopc03.pdf">A major evaluation of the test</a> conducted by the Department for Education in England found that the test is not delivering improvements in literacy capabilities, and in fact, is delivering some unwanted side effects, like class time being spent learning to read nonsense words rather than real words. </p>
<p>Numerous other recent studies of the implementation of the phonics test in England provide valuable information that allow us to test the claims for the test against research evidence.</p>
<h2>What does the research say?</h2>
<p><strong>Claim:</strong> The phonics test has improved reading results in England since its introduction.</p>
<p><strong>Evidence:</strong> Year 1 children in England are certainly getting better at passing the phonics test. Over the past six years, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/577806/SFR42_Phonics_KS1_2016.pdf">pass rates have increased by 23%</a>. This means around 90% of Year 1 children in England can now successfully read nonsense words like “yune” and “thrand”. </p>
<p>However <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283186153_The_inclusion_of_pseudowords_within_the_year_one_phonics_%27Screening_Check%27_in_English_primary_schools">research has found</a> that the ability to read nonsense words is an unreliable predictor of later reading success.</p>
<p>And so far, the phonics test in England <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/577806/SFR42_Phonics_KS1_2016.pdf">has not improved reading comprehension scores</a>.</p>
<p>As the test only tests single syllable words with regular phonic patterns, it is not possible to know how many English children can read words like “one”, “was”, “two”, “love”, “what”, “who”, or “because”, as such words are not included in the test. This is unfortunate because these are amongst the 100 most common words in the English language, which in turn make up 50% of the words we read everyday - whether in a novel, a newspaper article or a government form.</p>
<p>“Yune”, “thrand” and “poth”, on the other hand, make 0% of the words we read.</p>
<p><strong>Claim</strong>: The phonics test will pick up children who are having reading difficulties. Birmingham <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-18/expert-panel-recommends-literacy,-numeracy-check-for-year-1/8954752">has stated</a> “the idea behind these checks is to ensure students don’t slip through the cracks”.</p>
<p><strong>Evidence:</strong> <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/doi/10.1111/1467-9817.12029/full">Research in England</a> has found that the test was no more accurate than the teacher’s judgement in identifying children with reading difficulties. Teachers already know which children struggle. As researchers, <a href="https://www.teachers.org.uk/files/y1psc-survey-october-2012.pdf">teachers</a> and <a href="https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/phonics-test-no-use-principals-ng-b88439552z">principals</a>
have all said - teachers need more support in knowing how to support those struggling children. </p>
<p><strong>Claim:</strong> The phonics test will provide detailed diagnostics to support teachers to make effective interventions. The chair of the panel recommending the test <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-18/expert-panel-recommends-literacy,-numeracy-check-for-year-1/8954752">says</a> that the phonics test will drill into the detail of phonics to establish what children know.</p>
<p><strong>Evidence:</strong> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314193691_Decoding_the_phonics_screening_check">A thorough analysis of the test’s components</a> found it fails to test some of the most common sound/letter matches in English, and indeed screens for a very limited number of the hundreds of sound/letter matches in English. They found that children can achieve the pass grade of 32 from 40 with only limited phonic knowledge. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309672507_Assessing_reading_development_through_systematic_synthetic_phonics">Other research</a> found the test fails to give any information about what the specific phonic struggles of a child might be , or whether the struggles are indeed with phonics. </p>
<p>These limitations mean the check has negligible diagnostic or instructional use for classroom teachers. </p>
<h2>Learning lessons</h2>
<p>Australia is in the fortunate position of being able to learn from the research that has been conducted since the implementation of the phonics test and mandatory synthetic phonics teaching in England. The lesson is clear. The test is unable to deliver what was hoped. Australia should look elsewhere for answers to its literacy challenges. </p>
<p>Already state Education Ministers have begun to let Birmingham know that <a href="https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/ellery-rules-out-phonics-test-ng-b88574201z">they will not be taking up the offer of the national phonics test</a>. </p>
<p>This may be an issue where Australia is able to overcome its intellectual cringe, and act on the research evidence rather than old colonial ties.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83045/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Misty Adoniou works for the University of Canberra. She has received funding from government and non-government organisations to research in the areas of curriculum, refugee education, teacher standards and spelling. She is on the Board of Directors of TESOL International, an affiliation of more than 100 English teachers associations worldwide.</span></em></p>Education Minister Simon Birmingham is right to be concerned about the number of children struggling with literacy - but this test is not the solution.Misty Adoniou, Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/821132017-08-05T08:37:50Z2017-08-05T08:37:50ZNAPLAN results show it isn’t the basics that are missing in Australian education<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181078/original/file-20170804-22508-ceo6pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dan Peled</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The preliminary results of NAPLAN 2017 <a href="http://www.acara.edu.au/docs/default-source/Media-Releases/20170802-naplan-2017-media-release.pdf?sfvrsn=2">are out</a>, and the news isn’t good. The annual test of our students’ literacy and numeracy skills shows that <a href="https://theconversation.com/naplan-is-ten-years-old-so-how-is-the-nation-faring-81565">not much has changed since 2011</a>, coincidentally – or not – when we began this annual circus of public reporting of NAPLAN results. </p>
<p>In fact, it seems our kids are actually getting dumber – at least as measured by the NAPLAN tests.</p>
<h2>Going backwards</h2>
<p>The year’s Year 9 students first sat the test back in 2011 when they were in Year 3, so we can now track the cohort’s performance over time. </p>
<p>It is particularly useful to track their performance against the writing assessment task, as all the grade levels are marked against <a href="https://www.nap.edu.au/naplan/writing">the same ten assessment criteria</a>. Depending upon how they perform against each assessment criterion, they are assigned a Band level – ranging from Band 1, the lowest, to Band 10, the highest. </p>
<p>The minimum benchmark shifts for each year level, because we would expect a different minimum level of writing performance for 16-year-olds than we would of ten-year-olds. So, in Year 3 the minimum benchmark is Band 2, and in Year 9 it is Band 6. </p>
<p>A gifted and talented Year 3 student could easily achieve a Band 6 or above, and it is conceivable a struggling Year 9 student may only reach a Band 2.</p>
<p>This year, a staggering 16.5% of Year 9 students across Australia were below benchmark in writing. Back in 2011, when those students were in Year 3, only 2.8% of them were below benchmark. Somehow we dropped the ball for thousands of those kids as they progressed through school.</p>
<p>The high-performing states of New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT cannot claim immunity from this startling increase in students falling behind as they progress through school. Their results show exactly the same trends. This is a nationwide problem.</p>
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<h2>It gets worse</h2>
<p>Not only are the numbers of low-performing students increasing, but the inverse is occurring for our high-achieving students: their numbers decrease as they move through school. </p>
<p>This year, only 4.8% of Year 9 students across Australia performed far above the minimum benchmark – that is, at a Band 10 level. However, back in 2011, 15.7% of those same students were performing far above the minimum benchmark for Year 3 – that is, at a Band 6 or above. </p>
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<p>The trend is strikingly similar across all the jurisdictions. As NSW congratulates itself on <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/naplan-2017-year-9-results-improve-but-68-per-cent-will-still-have-to-resit-an-exam-20170801-gxmru9.html">improving its Year 9 results</a>, it might want to look a little closer to see what the figures are really saying. </p>
<p>In 2011 an impressive 20% of NSW Year 3 students were far above benchmark in writing. But by the time they had reached Year 9 this year, the number of them who were far above the benchmark had dwindled to a depressing 5.7%.</p>
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<h2>What is happening?</h2>
<p>Why do we start so well, and then lose both high performers and strugglers along the way? Isn’t school supposed to be growing their literacy skills, not diminishing them?</p>
<p>Well, the NAPLAN statistics not only illustrate the problem, they actually provide the explanation. </p>
<p>We don’t have an early years literacy “problem” in Australia. The percentage of students below benchmark in Year 3 converts to very small numbers. In Victoria in 2016, for example, there were around 450 Year 3 students below benchmark. </p>
<p>It should be very easy to locate those children, and provide intensive interventions specifically designed for each student. But apparently we don’t.</p>
<p>By Year 5, those low performers across Australia are simply treading water and our high performers start to slide. Then it all takes a dramatic turn for the worse in Year 7, with a five-fold increase in students below benchmark and a three-fold decrease in those who are far above the benchmark.</p>
<p>So, what is going on?</p>
<p>Well, reading and writing gets harder in Year 4, and every year after that. </p>
<p>The Year 3 test is looking for evidence that the children have learned their basic reading and writing skills. They can decode the words on the page and comprehend their literal meaning. They can retell a simple story that is readable to others.</p>
<p>However, by Year 5, the test begins to assess the children’s ability to infer from and evaluate what they read, and to consider their audience as they write.</p>
<p>In Year 7 it is expected that children are now no longer learning to read and write, but that they are reading and writing to learn. To achieve this they need deep and technical vocabularies, and to be able to manipulate sentence structures in ways we do not and cannot in our spoken language.</p>
<p>And the NAPLAN results suggest that many of them cannot.</p>
<p>Instead, they are stuck with their basic literacy skills, obviously well learned in the early years of school. They can read – but only simple books with simple vocabulary, simple grammatical structures and simple messages. They can write – but they write the way they speak.</p>
<h2>What’s the solution?</h2>
<p>Raise our expectations of our students. And raise the quality and the challenge of the literacy work we do with them. </p>
<p>There has been a misplaced focus on “back-to-basics” literacy education in recent years. The last ten years of NAPLAN testing shows us we are already exemplary at the basics. It is the complex we are bad at. </p>
<p>It’s time to change tack. Our attention needs to focus on developing the deep comprehension skills of our upper-primary and high school students. And our teachers need – and want – the resources and the professional learning to help them do this. </p>
<p>Teachers must build their own understanding of the ways in which the English language works, so they can teach their students to read rich and complex literature for inference, to use complex language structures to craft eloquent and engaging written pieces, and to build sophisticated and deep vocabularies.</p>
<p>It isn’t the basics that are missing in Australian education; it is challenge and complexity.</p>
<p>And until we change our educational policy direction to reflect that, we will continue to fail to help our children grow into literate young adults – and that is bad news for us all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82113/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Misty Adoniou works for the University of Canberra. She has received funding from the Australian government to research orientation programs for refugees, teacher standards, and to investigate the teaching of spelling and writing. She is on the Board of Directors of TESOL International. </span></em></p>The preliminary results of NAPLAN 2017 are out, and the news isn’t good. The annual test of our students’ literacy and numeracy skills shows that not much has changed since 2011, coincidentally – or not…Misty Adoniou, Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/792692017-06-13T03:13:14Z2017-06-13T03:13:14ZCould you pass the proposed English test for Australian citizenship?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173507/original/file-20170613-16669-1ipiaon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">English language tests will be used to decide Australian citizenship.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Australian government is proposing <a href="https://www.border.gov.au/about/reports-publications/discussion-papers-submissions">tough new English language competency requirements</a> for those seeking Australian citizenship. </p>
<p>Alongside a test of Australian values, and proof of your integration into Australian society, you’ll need to prove you can read, write and speak English at a competent level</p>
<h2>We’ve been here before</h2>
<p><strong>Question:</strong> What do these two excerpts have in common - besides their clumsy sentence structure?</p>
<ol>
<li><p><em>If the land is ploughed when wet the furrows may, and in all probability will, wear a more finished appearance, and will be more pleasant to the eye, but land so ploughed will be more inclined to become set or baked, and when in this state will not produce a maximum yield.</em> </p></li>
<li><p><em>By carefully preplanning projects, implementing pollution control measures, monitoring the effects of mining and rehabilitating mined areas, the coal industry minimises the impact on the neighbouring community, the immediate environment and long-term land capability.</em> </p></li>
</ol>
<p><strong>Answer:</strong> They are both language tests used to decide Australian citizenship.</p>
<p>The first is <a href="https://museumvictoria.com.au/discoverycentre/websites-mini/journeys-australia/1900s20s/immigration-restriction-act/">a 50 word dictation test that was key to the White Australia Policy</a>. It was used to keep non-Europeans out of Australia. </p>
<p>Even if you passed the test in English, the immigration officer had <a href="https://moadoph.gov.au/blog/conscription-1916-who-were-the-maltese-children-of-billy-hughes/">the right to test you again in another European language</a>. It was used from 1901 until 1958. </p>
<p>The second one <a href="https://www.ielts.org/-/media/pdfs/115024_general_training_reading_sample_task_-_multiple_choice.ashx?la=en">is 50 words from a 1000 word reading comprehension exam</a> with 40 questions that you must complete in 60 minutes. </p>
<p>This test is key to Australia’s proposed new Citizenship test. You must also write two essays, do a 30 minute listening test and a 15 minute speaking exam. If it passes through Parliament this week, it will be used from 2017.</p>
<p>Aspiring Australian citizens will need to score a Band 6 on the general stream of <a href="https://www.ielts.org/about-the-test/two-types-of-ielts-test">the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) test</a>, the same score as those <a href="https://www.ielts.org/about-the-test/who-accepts-ielts-scores/RO/australian-national-university">seeking entry to Australia’s top university</a>.</p>
<p>So, could you pass the test?</p>
<h2>The reading test</h2>
<p>You have 60 minutes to read at least four texts taken from magazines, newspapers or training manuals, and answer 40 comprehension questions. Your short answer responses are also assessed for grammar and spelling. Here is an excerpt <a href="https://www.ielts.org/-/media/pdfs/115025_general_training_reading_sample_task_-_sentence_completion.ashx?la=en">from a piece about bee behaviour</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The direction of the sun is represented by the top of the hive wall. If she runs straight up, this means that the feeding place is in the same direction as the sun. However, if, for example, the feeding place is 40 degrees to the left of the sun, then the dancer would run 40 degrees to the left of the vertical line.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.ielts.org/about-the-test/sample-test-questions">Try the test for yourself</a>.</p>
<h2>The writing test</h2>
<p>You have 60 minutes to complete two writing tasks. <a href="https://www.ielts.org/-/media/pdfs/115029_general_training_writing_sample_task_-_task_1.ashx?la=en">For example</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Write a letter to the accommodation officer complaining about your room mate and asking for a new room.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You are marked on the length of your response, its cohesion, vocabulary and grammar. </p>
<p>To give you something to gauge yourself by, <a href="https://www.ielts.org/-/media/pdfs/115004_general_training_writing_sample_scripts.ashx?la=en">this one didn’t achieve the required score of 6</a>. It begins, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to express my dissatisfaction with my room-mate. As you know we share one room, I can not study in the room at all any more if I still stay there.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As <a href="https://thewest.com.au/politics/immigration-policy/immigration-minister-denies-changes-to-australian-citizenship-is-a-crackdown-on-muslims-ng-b88451112z">Senator Penny Wong observed about the test</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Frankly if English grammar is the test there might be a few members of parliament who might struggle.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Currently our national school test results from NAPLAN show that 15.3% of Year 9 students are below benchmark in writing. This means they would not achieve a Band 6 on the IELTS test. </p>
<h2>A fair test?</h2>
<p>I prepared students for the IELTS test when I lived and taught in Greece. They needed a score of 6 to get into Foundation courses in British universities. It wasn’t an easy test and sometimes it took them more than one try to succeed. </p>
<p>My students were middle class, living comfortably at home with mum and dad. They had been to school all their lives and were highly competent readers and writers in their mother tongue of Greek. </p>
<p>They had been learning English at school since Grade 4, and doing private English tuition after school for even longer. Essentially they had been preparing for their IELTS test for at least 8 years.</p>
<p>They were not 40-year-old women whose lives as refugees has meant they have never been to school, and cannot read and write in their mother tongue. </p>
<p>Neither were they adjusting to a new culture, trying to find affordable accommodation and a job while simultaneously dealing with post-traumatic stress and the challenge of settling their teenage children into a brand new world.</p>
<h2>Learning a language takes time</h2>
<p>Even if we conclude that tests about dancing bees and recalcitrant room-mates are fit for the purpose of assessing worthiness for citizenship - and that is surely very debatable - we must acknowledge that it is going to take a very long time for our most vulnerable aspiring citizens to reach a proficiency that will enable them to pass the test. </p>
<p>Currently we offer them <a href="https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/d16_1687803_eng_adult_migrant_english_program.pdf">510 hours of free English tuition</a>. That is at least 5 years short of <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09500782.2012.682580?src=recsys&journalCode=rlae20">what the research says</a> is required to reach English language competency.</p>
<h2>Testing English doesn’t teach it</h2>
<p>The three ingredients of successful language learning are motivation, opportunity and good tuition. </p>
<p>The Australian government must address all three if it wishes to increase the English language proficiency of its citizens. </p>
<p>An English language test may appear to be a compelling motivation to learn the language, but without the opportunity to learn and excellent tuition over time, the test is not a motivation. It is an unfair barrier to anyone for whom English is not their mother tongue.</p>
<p>And then this new policy starts to look and feel like Australia’s old White Australia Policy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Misty Adoniou works for the University of Canberra. She has received funding from government and non-government organisations to research refugee orientation, spelling, writing and teacher standards. She is on the Board of Directors of TESOL International, a global affiliation of English teachers' associations. </span></em></p>The English language test is an unfair barrier to anyone for whom English is not their mother tongue.Misty Adoniou, Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/784552017-05-29T23:43:42Z2017-05-29T23:43:42ZConfused about changes to school funding? Here’s what you need to know<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171287/original/file-20170529-25198-2woku2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How will policy changes affect schools?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Coalition government <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-02/malcolm-turnbull-announces-schools-funding-boost/8489806">announced their new school funding proposal</a> with a flourish, and a Gonski. </p>
<p>David Gonski was the architect of <a href="https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/review-of-funding-for-schooling-final-report-dec-2011.pdf">the 2011 needs-based funding model</a> that <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tasmania-signs-up-to-schools-funding-deal-20130709-2pnrb.html">the Labor party hobbled</a>, and which the Liberal party then <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-26/pyne-adamant-gonski-school-funding-needs-overhaul2c-despite-st/5116978">sent right down the gurgler</a>. </p>
<p>So, for many in the education sector, Gonski’s reappearance was both surprising and comforting. Did this mean we were back to a funding model that was apolitical, sector blind and all about a distribution of money based on need?</p>
<p>Well, there is good news and bad news, and then some more bad news.</p>
<h2>More money</h2>
<p><strong>The good news</strong> </p>
<p>It is substantially more money than what the Coalition government currently has allocated for education - 75% more by <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/2017-05-02/press-conference-minister-education-and-training-senator-hon-simon-birmingham-and">the Prime Minister’s own reckoning</a>, from A$17.5 billion this year to $30.6 billion by 2027. </p>
<p><strong>The bad news</strong></p>
<p>It’s less money than what some states and systems were promised under the deals done with the Labor government - <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/05/02/gonski-20-school-funding-plan-amounts-22b-cut-plibersek">about $22 billion less</a>. They say they need that promised money to deliver on education programs they have already put in place, and which they argue are already <a href="https://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/news/how-gonski-funding-is-making-a-difference-to-rocky/3151447/">making a real difference to students</a>. </p>
<h2>Fairer and sector blind</h2>
<p><strong>The good news</strong></p>
<p>This funding deal returns to the original Gonski principle of one funding formula for everyone. Each student will attract the same base amount - called the Schooling Resource Standard - of $9,271 per primary school student and $12,193 per high school student.</p>
<p>This is in contrast to the multiple deals done with systems and states back in 2013 as the Labor government tried to get a Gonski take-up around the nation. They gave out lots of money, and promised that everyone would be a winner. This <a href="https://theconversation.com/gonski-model-was-corrupted-but-labor-and-coalition-are-both-to-blame-65875">deal-making did not solve the problem</a> of funding inequity between the schooling sectors. Poor schools got more money, but so did rich schools. </p>
<p><strong>The bad news</strong></p>
<p>The federal government inexplicably remains the benevolent benefactor of the private sector. It will fund 80% of the Schooling Resource Standard for private schools students, and only 20% for government school students. It will rely on the goodwill of the states to fund the remaining amounts. So it is only the private schools that are getting an iron-clad guarantee for most of their funding into the future.</p>
<p>Not fair and certainly not sector blind.</p>
<h2>Needs-based</h2>
<p><strong>The good news</strong></p>
<p>The government claims their new funding proposal returns us to the absolute crux of the original Gonski review - it will be truly needs-based. </p>
<p>This means there will be extra loadings for students who need more support to achieve. There will be loadings for low socio-economic status, Indigenous students, students with a disability, students with limited English language proficiency, school size, and regional or remote locations.</p>
<p><strong>The bad news - and this is <em>really</em> bad news</strong></p>
<p>The government has no proposal for the allocation of those loadings. They don’t even know how many students are eligible for those loadings. </p>
<p>As a consequence they have no idea how much money it will cost to fund them. This is why the pundits keep saying “more analysis is needed” before anyone knows how much their school is really going to get, or lose.</p>
<p>Who will be eligible for the disability loadings? </p>
<p>Each state and sector defines disability differently. The government says it will come up with a national definition. But it does not have one yet.</p>
<p>Who will be eligible for the English language loadings? </p>
<p>How “limited” does your English language need to be? How would this be measured? Nobody knows, including the government. </p>
<p>And there is nothing in the budget papers or the Education Acts to indicate that the money will actually be delivered to the students who attract the loadings. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-04/taxpayer-funds-directed-away-from-poor-catholic-schools:-report/8497810">Recent history</a> suggests the money won’t necessarily go to them. <a href="http://insidestory.org.au/what-gonski-really-meant-and-how-thats-been-forgotten-almost-everywhere">States, instead, could just spend the money on the general business of running an education system</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/review-of-funding-for-schooling-final-report-dec-2011.pdf">original Gonski report</a> said that it was imperative an independent body, a National Schools Resourcing Body, be set up to answer these questions, and to monitor how those loadings are distributed. </p>
<p>However there is no indication that body will ever be instituted, and without it this funding proposal cannot claim to be needs-based and it will not successfully address educational disadvantage. </p>
<p>Very bad news indeed.</p>
<h2>A new review - Gonski 2.0</h2>
<p><strong>The good news</strong></p>
<p>David Gonski will now conduct a new review - the <a href="https://theconversation.com/gonski-2-0-is-this-the-school-funding-plan-we-have-been-looking-for-finally-yes-77081">Gonski 2.0 review</a>. </p>
<p>This new review is to decide what good teaching and learning looks like. That’s a little odd as the government already has a body that does that - <a href="https://www.aitsl.edu.au">the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership</a>.</p>
<p>But fingers crossed he’ll be able to sneak that National Schools Resourcing body back into his recommendations.</p>
<p><strong>The bad news</strong></p>
<p>The expert panel has only until December to come up with an answer that will inevitably start with “It depends…”</p>
<p>They haven’t even decided on the terms of reference yet.</p>
<h2>A suggestion for the panel</h2>
<p>If I could give one suggestion to Gonski’s review panel as they tackle this complicated question, it would be this: ask teachers what is needed to close that achievement gap.</p>
<p>Ken Boston, a member of the Gonski review panel, <a href="http://insidestory.org.au/what-gonski-really-meant-and-how-thats-been-forgotten-almost-everywhere">observed</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We concluded that the issue in low-performing schools is not the quality of teachers in these schools but the magnitude of the task they are facing. These teachers work in the emergency wards of Australian education, yet they lack the battery of specialist support typical of an emergency ward in a hospital. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The fact that we never ask teachers at the coal face for their expert input on what works, and what doesn’t, is perhaps the strangest twist of all in this good news, bad news story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78455/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Misty Adoniou works for the University of Canberra. She has received government funding to research spelling, curriculum, and refugee education and orientation. She is on the Board of Directors of TESOL International, a global affiliation of teacher associations. </span></em></p>Here’s what the latest funding proposals mean for schools.Misty Adoniou, Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/762832017-04-18T03:25:00Z2017-04-18T03:25:00ZHow do we learn to read?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165533/original/image-20170418-32700-1w14osn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The aim of all reading is comprehension. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The sign on the public car park in the tiny Tasmanian town of Wynyard reads,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Egress from this carpark is to be via the access lane in the rear.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Egress?” I wondered.</p>
<p>As my 21-year-old son quipped, perhaps the council had called in the local duke to write its signs. Or at least the local lawyer.</p>
<p>I could say all the words on the sign with very little effort, and with impressive fluency. </p>
<p>That is called decoding.</p>
<p>I had to work a little harder to understand what the sign was saying.</p>
<p>That is called comprehending.</p>
<p>The aim of reading is, of course, comprehension. </p>
<p>In essence, <a href="https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/phonics-v-whole-word-battle-has-always-been-about-politics-not">debates around how to best teach reading</a> have been about which comes first, the decoding or the comprehending.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ldaustralia.org/client/documents/Wolf_How_the_Reading_Brain_Resolves_the_Reading_Wars_2013.pdf">Research concludes</a> these debates are redundant because comprehension and decoding are codependent. </p>
<p>The federal government’s recent proposal, however, for <a href="https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/phonics-test-no-use-principals-ng-b88439552z">a Year 1 Phonics Screening test</a> – which tests a child’s ability to decode made-up words – appears to support the view that decoding comes before comprehension. </p>
<p>Comprehension, therefore, is deemed irrelevant – at least initially.</p>
<p>So who is right? The researchers or the politicians? </p>
<p>Let’s take a look at what the research tells us about how we learn to read.</p>
<h2>Tackling unknown words</h2>
<p>It was the first word in the car park sign that threw me. “Egress.” </p>
<p>I used my knowledge of how sounds map on to letters in English to decode it. However, because I couldn’t remember ever hearing the word said out loud, I wasn’t sure if I was decoding it correctly.</p>
<p>It might be EE-gress or ee-GRESS, EGG-ress, or egg-RESS. It is the first, apparently. I Googled it later.</p>
<p>In any case my decoding efforts didn’t help me understand what the word means. In order for decoding skills to be of any use in reading, children need an excellent vocabulary to which they can cross reference as they attempt to decode.</p>
<p><strong>Tip 1:</strong> teach phonics through words already in the children’s vocabulary.</p>
<h2>Building children’s vocabularies</h2>
<p>Before we rush out and start teaching children lists of vocabulary, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/us/quality-of-words-not-quantity-is-crucial-to-language-skills-study-finds.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20141017&_r=2">words in lists are not enough</a>.</p>
<p>If someone had shown me “egress” by itself on a flashcard, I might have guessed it was a bird. </p>
<p>Luckily, “egress” was in a full sentence on a sign in front of a car park, and all of that context helped me comprehend the word. </p>
<p>Without context, words are just letters on a page. This is because all words in English are polysemic - they have multiple meanings depending upon the context. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The <strong>wind</strong> in my hair. My baby has <strong>wind</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And some words keep their spelling but change their pronunciation as well as their meaning.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’d like to <strong>wind</strong> you up. I need to <strong>wind</strong> my clock. Why do I always **wind **up doing the dishes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Tip 2:</strong> build your children’s vocabulary by talking and reading to them so that they encounter words in all their many and varied guises. <a href="http://www.adelmanlab.org/cd/cdps4.pdf">Seeing a word in many different contexts is more important</a> than just seeing the word flashed at you many times. </p>
<h2>Grammar matters</h2>
<p>The grammar of the parking sign in Wynyard also helped my comprehension. </p>
<p>I had figured out from the context that “egress” meant either entry or exit.
I hear a lot of language so I understand how words “collocate” in English - that is, how some words always hang out together grammatically. My experience with the language meant I knew that we exit “from” and enter “into”.</p>
<p>The more we hear and read real language, the more we learn about how word order works in English.</p>
<p><strong>Tip 3:</strong> teach reading through real books with real language so that children learn the rhythm and patterns of English grammar.</p>
<h2>Experience counts</h2>
<p>I relied on my experience as a driver to look around and see that a median strip in the road would make “egress” from the front of the car park tricky. Life experience helps us read too. </p>
<p>If I write I live in a studio apartment in San Jose, your interpretation of where I live will depend upon whether you understand a studio apartment to be a basement bedsit, or penthouse bachelor pad. It will depend on whether you understand San Jose to be an affluent tech hub or an working class industrial city. </p>
<p>The words alone cannot carry all the meaning of my message. You bring your life experience to the task of reading my words.</p>
<p><strong>Tip 4:</strong> give children lots of real life experiences and talk to them about what they see. Trips out and about, and chats about things beyond their everyday environment are important. </p>
<h2>Are we giving poor readers the help they need?</h2>
<p>Good readers have a full repertoire of skills, each dependent upon the other. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>They have excellent oral language and a wide vocabulary. They know what words mean and this helps them decode.</p></li>
<li><p>They can decode and this helps them locate the word in their existing vocabulary.</p></li>
<li><p>They know the structure of English through exposure to authentic complex written and spoken language.</p></li>
<li><p>They use rich life experiences to support their comprehension of written texts.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Poor readers need all of these skills too. Yet our interventions for poor readers typically only address one skill - decoding. </p>
<p>Our declining results in <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-06/australian-school-performance-in-absolute-decline-globally/8098028">international tests of literacy</a> show us that our 15 year olds can decode but they can’t comprehend. </p>
<p>Until we pay full attention to all the other reading skills, the decline will continue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76283/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Misty Adoniou works for the University of Canberra. She has received government and NGO research funding to investigate teacher education, refugee orientation and the teaching of spelling and writing. She is on the Board of Directors of TESOL International.</span></em></p>Four tips for teaching reading.Misty Adoniou, Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/735132017-02-27T04:35:37Z2017-02-27T04:35:37ZThe long journey from a refugee camp to an Australian school<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158030/original/image-20170223-32118-157tifi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Children at a refugee camp in Greece. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frederic Seguin/Newzulu</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The final year of school is <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-way-we-teach-our-children-is-truly-crazy-20170223-gujyh1.html">tough for a lot of kids</a>. So much seems to be riding on this culmination of 12 years of study. </p>
<p>When Rema was in Year 12 in an Australian school she found it particularly difficult. She is a very clever girl. She had studied hard and her long held ambition was to study medicine. Her parents, a civil engineer and a physics teacher, are hugely supportive of her. </p>
<p>But Rema’s hard work, goal-setting and intelligence, along with her parents’ professional status and support, just weren’t enough. </p>
<p>War had intervened. Twice.</p>
<h2>One out of 3.7 million stories</h2>
<p>Rema was born in Iraq, and had just finished Year 5 in primary school when the family were forced to flee the war in Iraq and move to Syria as refugees. She lost more than a year of school as the family sought to find a way to start life over again. </p>
<p>Fortunately the language of school was the same, Arabic, and with help from her teacher mum, Rema made up her missed year of school, and worked hard at high school in Syria. She was on track to do medicine at university. Then war intervened again. </p>
<p>The family fled to Jordan - refugees once more, and, once again, Rema was unable to go to school. She became one of the 3.7 million refugee children around the globe <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/en-au/news/press/2016/9/57d7d6f34/unhcr-reports-crisis-refugee-education.html">unable to attend school</a>.</p>
<p>Rema’s family was selected to fill <a href="https://www.border.gov.au/about/corporate/information/fact-sheets/60refugee">Australia’s annual quota of around 13,700 refugees</a>.</p>
<p>The family was provided with <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/settlement-and-multicultural-affairs/programs-policy/settlement-services/humanitarian-settlement-services-hss">settlement support</a> on arrival and they are very thankful to have found a safe and stable haven. </p>
<p>But Rema had to make up yet more missed schooling, and this time she had to do it in a brand new language. She did remarkably well but there just wasn’t enough time time to catch up on all the lost learning, especially while simultaneously learning English from scratch. </p>
<p>At the time, Rema said, wishfully, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If I could show you what I know in Arabic or French, you can see how much I know.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She explained her frustration, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Even if you’re writing and you are trying your best, but then the other Australian kids just beat you because they get it easily.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are thousands of stories like Rema’s in Australia, <a href="http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002448/244847E.pdf">and millions more across the globe</a>. Clever, ambitious kids whose goals and dreams have been whipped away from them by events they have no part in. </p>
<p>The average years in exile for refugees has <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/57d9d01d0">soared beyond 20 years</a>, and education opportunities are so poor that <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/en-au/news/press/2016/9/57d7d6f34/unhcr-reports-crisis-refugee-education.html">only 22% of refugee children receive any secondary education</a>. </p>
<h2>Education for refugees in Greece</h2>
<p>Recently I visited one of the many refugee camps in Greece. These housed around 60,000 refugees who were headed for northern Europe when Europe’s borders closed last year. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158035/original/image-20170223-32094-7lamwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158035/original/image-20170223-32094-7lamwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158035/original/image-20170223-32094-7lamwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158035/original/image-20170223-32094-7lamwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158035/original/image-20170223-32094-7lamwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158035/original/image-20170223-32094-7lamwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158035/original/image-20170223-32094-7lamwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">YouAmI set up preschool language classes in the Greek camp using a donated portable building.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Originally just transiting through Greece, they are <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/greece-left-alone-in-the-refugee-crisis/a-36699740">now trapped there in makeshift camps</a>. </p>
<p>Greece is struggling to cope with <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-greece-poverty-idUSKBN15Z1NM">its own poverty crisis</a> so there are real limits to the kind of settlement services they can offer. </p>
<p>Abandoned toilet paper factories and disused munitions sites do not easily convert to comfortable living space for hundreds or thousands of people.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Greece has opened its public school system, up to Year 9, to the thousands of children in the refugee camps. This year children have been bussed to the nearest local schools to do intensive Greek classes in the afternoons, in preparation for full integration of the children into the mainstream school system in September.</p>
<p>It is a laudable move, but it is not without significant challenges.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/mp-storms-athens-school-refugee-classes-170117210855348.html">Right wing political groups</a> are already actively picketing some schools demanding the removal of the refugee children. </p>
<p>Greek parents in the local communities are worried about what the consequences will be for their own children’s learning. Many of the camps are in rural areas, so the refugee children will be attending small village schools which have had no experience of migrants.</p>
<p>Greek teachers are concerned about their own ability to work effectively with children who have had disrupted schooling, traumatic experiences, limited school language and who are living in very difficult and impoverished circumstances in the camps. They have never had to do this before and have no training.</p>
<p>These are not dissimilar to the challenges faced by most countries hosting and educating refugees - <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-an-influx-of-refugee-background-students-mean-for-schools-48738">even wealthy countries like Australia</a>.</p>
<h2>Solutions for a global challenge</h2>
<p>At the heart of the solution is ensuring these children <a href="https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/language-for-resilience-report-en.pdf">have access to excellent language programs</a>, both to support the maintenance of their mother tongue and to support them in the languages of education and employment in their hosting or settlement country. </p>
<p>Training must be provided to teachers to prepare them for teaching children who do not speak the language of the school, who have had traumatic experiences, disrupted schooling, and are likely to be living with extreme financial stress.</p>
<p>With access to coherent and quality education programs, that respond to their life experiences, these children can continue on their journey of resilience and achievement - to the benefit of us all.</p>
<p>In my future, I know I want a doctor like Rema by my side when I am in need of an intelligent, persistent and focused health professional. A woman who has seen the world from all sides and has still decided she wants to be on humanity’s side.</p>
<p>• <em>Rema is a pseudonym. She was a participant in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272790745_Supporting_school-university_pathways_for_refugee_students%27_access_and_participation_in_tertiary_education">a larger research study of the educational experiences of refugees</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73513/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Misty Adoniou works for the University of Canberra. She has received federal government and international funding to investigate the education and orientation of refugees to Australia. She is on the Board of Directors of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) International, a not-for-profit teachers' association.</span></em></p>Child refugees need to have access to quality language programs so they have a chance at doing well at school - and teachers also need to be given appropriate training.Misty Adoniou, Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/700302016-12-06T22:49:04Z2016-12-06T22:49:04ZAustralia’s students are failing. I blame the politicians<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148951/original/image-20161206-15197-1ame5g5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Politicians need to invest in teachers to improve education standards.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The results of PISA 2015 have just <a href="http://www.oecd.org/pisa/">been released</a> – and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-06/australian-school-performance-in-absolute-decline-globally/8098028">Australia has slipped down the rankings</a>, again.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.acer.edu.au/about-us/media/media-releases/latest-pisa-results-australia-at-the-crossroad">Australian Council of Educational Research has called it</a>, and Australia is now in absolute decline in reading, mathematics and science.</p>
<p>A close reading of <a href="https://www.oecd.org/education/pisa-2015-results-volume-ii-9789264267510-en.htm">the full 472 page report from PISA </a> does indeed offer some salutary lessons for Australia. </p>
<h2>1. Federal politicians - butt out!</h2>
<p>The more federal politicians get involved in education, the worse we perform.</p>
<p>Our decline began at about the same time our federal politicians took over education with their own personal ideas picked up from their politician mates in other countries, and began playing games with the states and territories, holding them to ransom if their latest great idea wasn’t implemented. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2004/s1065586.htm">Dr Brendan Nelson started it all </a> with a National Curriculum and the hugely non-standardised and ultimately meaningless A to E reporting system that we now endure across the country. </p>
<p>The Labor Rudd government took up the baton in 2008 and instituted the national assessment plan for literacy and numeracy (<a href="https://www.nap.edu.au/naplan">NAPLAN</a>). </p>
<p>Julia Gillard then made friends with fellow lawyer Joel Klein, the head of the New York city Department of Education. She decided to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/a-new-york-state-of-mind-20081012-4yyk.html">follow his lead</a> and introduce <a href="https://www.myschool.edu.au">MySchool</a> - the public naming and shaming website for schools, where schools’ NAPLAN results are released for all to pore over and make ill-conceived comparisons across schools. </p>
<p>This was despite New York, and the US as a whole, performing far below Australia on international testing. </p>
<p>Then conservative federal education minister Christopher Pyne <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/back-to-basics-in-new-curriculum-literacy-and-numeracy-to-the-fore/news-story/93f9d178cc5a9d5517c60303fe6b71a2">introduced a back-to-basics curriculum </a> borrowed from England - another country which performs below Australia. Specifically, “creative and critical thinking” were to be stripped from the curriculum.</p>
<p>And the rationale for each of these changes wrought upon us by these doctors and lawyers taking time out to be politicians?</p>
<p>To stop our slide down the international education rankings. </p>
<p>So, how’s that working out for us?</p>
<p>How about we bring educators back into the policy fold?</p>
<h2>2. Stop rabbiting on about ‘back to basics’</h2>
<p>The 2015 PISA test was <a href="https://www.oecd.org/pisa/test/">a test of scientific literacy</a>. It wasn’t a test of scientific facts. The students didn’t have to know their periodic table off by heart, or to solve chemical equations. </p>
<p>PISA is not a test of content regurgitation. You can complete the test with no knowledge of the scientific facts. But you do need a scientific vocabulary, and an ability to think empirically. It was a reading comprehension test, and many of the answers were written.</p>
<p>In short, the students were being asked to <a href="https://theconversation.com/language-matters-in-science-and-mathematics-heres-why-68960">think, read and write like scientists</a>. </p>
<p>They had to read scientific explanations of phenomena (interestingly, the impact of fossil fuels on the global climate was the focus of several test items), alongside data charts and tables, interpret that information, analyse it and give a written rationale for their interpretation and analysis.</p>
<p>Our students failed precisely because their vocabulary, word reading and comprehension skills are basic. </p>
<p>The sooner the government pulls its <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-07/pm-malcolm-turnbull-unveils-$1-billion-innovation-program/7006952">“innovation” narrative</a> across into the education space to replace <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/christopher-pyne-leads-backtobasics-drive-in-early-years-for-numeracy-and-literacy/news-story/6c262399973e69bf424a2066c0df64c0">its “back to basics” mantra</a>, the better.</p>
<h2>3. Money matters</h2>
<p>Despite the huge investment in education over the past decade or more, <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-schools-continue-to-fall-behind-other-countries-in-maths-and-science-69341">we are not improving</a>.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean money doesn’t matter, <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-more-money-for-schools-improve-educational-outcomes-57656">because it obviously does</a> if you are the student, and you and your family don’t have any. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf">The report</a> couldn’t be clearer and the statistics couldn’t be more stark. If you are from a low socio-economic background you are highly likely to perform poorly at school. </p>
<p>The report also makes it clear that there is nothing natural about that fact, it is an environmental phenomenon. You perform poorly because your country didn’t provide an education system that enabled you to achieve.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/pisa-2015-results-volume-i_9789264266490-en#page461">The PISA report shows</a> that Australia is a high achiever in the inequity table. In fact, we are now even more inequitable than we have ever been. </p>
<p>Now, that is a result worth having a moral panic about. </p>
<h2>4. Invest in teachers</h2>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf">the global report</a>, the high correlating factors for the highest performing countries in science were:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the abilities of the teachers to teach and explain science concepts</p></li>
<li><p>hands on experiences with science</p></li>
<li><p>smaller class sizes </p></li>
<li><p>more hours spent doing science during school hours </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Hopefully our policymakers read the report closely enough to find out <a href="https://theconversation.com/governments-need-to-look-beyond-education-rankings-and-focus-on-inequities-in-the-system-69715">what is really going on</a> in education in Australia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70030/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Misty Adoniou works for the University of Canberra. She has received funding from government agencies to investigate teacher standards, curriculum and the education and orientation of refugees. She is on the Board of Directors of TESOL International.</span></em></p>Politicians need to stop meddling with education policy and invest in teachers if Australia’s science, mathematics and reading standards are to improve.Misty Adoniou, Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/689602016-11-17T23:16:12Z2016-11-17T23:16:12ZLanguage matters in science and mathematics - here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146297/original/image-20161116-13547-1glk7fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Struggling to understand? Most know the feeling</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What do you get when you cross a mafia mobster with a sociologist? </p>
<p>An offer you can’t understand.</p>
<p>It’s an old joke, and you could substitute “sociologist” with just about any other “ologist” - the broader point being that professions use language in ways that make it hard for outsiders to understand.</p>
<p>So, do sociologists, mathematicians, scientists and lawyers use language to be elitist and exclusive? Or is the language necessary to describe the specifics of their field?</p>
<p>And what role does school play in initiating students into the language of these different disciplines?</p>
<h2>Different ways of thinking</h2>
<p>As tempting as it is to think that different disciplines develop their own special language as a means of keeping others out of their domain - lawyers, we are looking at you - the reasons are not usually malevolent. </p>
<p>Disciplines use language in ways that are a reflection of the way they see the world.</p>
<p>Historians expect author bias when they read because they are not seeking one truth, but multiple perspectives on any one event. Understanding bias is important to making sense of all the component parts of an historical event. So, part of learning to read in history is to search for bias.</p>
<p>Mathematicians do not expect author bias. In maths, the author is invisible, inconsequential to the reader. There is one objective truth. Similarly in science there is an expectation that author bias is removed through careful attention paid to the methods used to prove the findings presented. </p>
<p>Poets and novelists embrace bias. They are using language to show their allegiances and to get the reader to join them.</p>
<p>In short, mathematicians, scientists, historians and poets think differently from one another - they understand the world around them in different ways, and they use language differently in order to communicate those understandings. </p>
<h2>Using language in different ways</h2>
<p>These different ways of understanding the world mean that sentence structures and vocabulary differ across the disciplines.</p>
<p>In a novel we could expect to read sentences beginning with elaborated phrases designed to evoke mood or setting, and make the writer visible to the reader, for example, the opening of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But we expect none of that in a scientific laboratory report.</p>
<p>In a novel unknown words can often be guessed from context, or even skipped, and meaning can still be maintained. However in mathematics there is no redundancy - every word counts. If one word is not understood it is probable the entire sentence will be misconstrued. </p>
<p>The disciplines generate specialised vocabulary - words for ideas and concepts that are peculiar or unique to that field. However they also use everyday vocabulary in specialised ways, so seemingly familiar words come to mean different things across the disciplines.</p>
<p>For example, mathematicians count the “faces” on a 3D object, geologists examine rock “faces”, historians may make assumptions “on the face” of evidence presented. And the novelist’s protagonist may be concerned about “losing face” and perhaps eventually having to “face up” to the truth.</p>
<p>“Insiders” are very often unaware of the challenges the language of their discipline poses to others because the language has become so familiar to them. </p>
<h2>What role do schools play?</h2>
<p>High schools expect their students to read and write using the language of the different disciplines. Students must write lab reports in science, short narratives in English, research reports in history and basic mathematical proofs in maths - all in one day! </p>
<p>Unfortunately, high school teachers rarely teach the language required for these tasks. </p>
<p>It is expected that somehow students will automatically become users of discipline language just because they are exposed to it. But these specialised uses of language have been constructed over hundreds of years by the experts in the discipline and students need explicit instruction and initiation into that language. </p>
<h2>All teachers are language teachers</h2>
<p>“All teachers are language teachers”. This is a mantra that has been swirling around in education for years. Most schools have it somewhere in their curriculum policy documents, <a href="http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/generalcapabilities/literacy/introduction/in-the-learning-areas">as does the Australian Curriculum</a>. </p>
<p>It’s a mantra that gets up the nose of many high school discipline teachers. The typical response is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have a curriculum full of content to get through, I don’t have time to teach this as well. Anyway, isn’t that the English teachers’ job. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And then there is the often unspoken defence, “I don’t know how to”. After all, “how to teach disciplinary language” does not feature in many secondary teacher education degrees.</p>
<p>But if high school teachers do not explicitly teach the language of their discipline, no-one else will. No-one else can. </p>
<p>Science teachers can’t expect English teachers to teach students to write lab reports anymore than English teachers would expect science teachers to teach alliteration and personification. </p>
<h2>STEM education investment at risk</h2>
<p>If high school teachers do not explicitly teach the language of their discipline, they are effectively ensuring their students remain outsiders.</p>
<p>Without explicit instruction, language that has become invisible and intuitive to the discipline teachers remains invisible and confounding to their students. </p>
<p>Teachers will not know if their students are underachieving because they don’t understand the language <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-our-kids-failing-in-maths-because-they-cant-read-23403">or because they don’t understand the concepts</a>. Both are serious problems but each has a very different solution.</p>
<p>And all the millions of dollars currently being poured into STEM education will be sadly wasted because we fail to take account of the role of language in achievement and engagement across the STEM disciplines.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68960/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Misty Adoniou works for the University of Canberra. She has received funding from organisations to investigate teacher standards, curriculum development and the education of refugee background students. She is currently on the Board of Directors of TESOL International representing over 100 English teacher associations around the globe.</span></em></p>For subjects mired in jargon and technical words, what role does language play in breaking down obstacles to communication and understanding.Misty Adoniou, Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/656322016-09-19T02:10:40Z2016-09-19T02:10:40ZAustralia’s educational policies both embody and entrench low expectations of students<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138167/original/image-20160919-17008-1uykc1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Newly arrived English language learners are often not taught by qualified specialist teachers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Miller/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was George W Bush who first described low educational expectations as a form of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/elections/bushtext071000.htm">“soft” bigotry</a>. But it is a mantra that has held a lot of appeal for Australian politicians and educational bureaucrats.</p>
<p>Sometimes the finger is pointed at teachers who are accused of not setting high enough standards for some of their students.</p>
<p>Sometimes the blame is assigned to the low achievers themselves. They don’t expect enough of themselves, or their parents don’t or their communities don’t. </p>
<p>But it seems politicians and bureaucrats are blind to their own bigotry, most particularly the ways in which their educational policies both embody and entrench low expectations of students with disabilities, and those who speak English as an additional language or dialect (EALD). </p>
<h2>Who needs a teacher, when caring will do</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.studentsfirst.gov.au/teacher-quality">The federal Department of Education website</a> is unequivocal about the importance of teachers. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The first step to achieving a quality education, which is so critical for the future of young Australians and our nation, is to lift the quality, professionalisation and status of the teaching profession.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Except, that is, for those with special needs or those learning English. They just need some caring companions.</p>
<p>Expectations of students with disabilities and newly arrived English language learners are so low that educational policies do not require they are taught by qualified specialists. </p>
<h2>Students with disabilities</h2>
<p>South Australian politician Kelly Vincent <a href="http://www.kellyvincentmlc.com/kelly-vincent-5rph-interview-on-disability-and-education/">calls out the culture of low expectations</a> in the area of disability education. </p>
<p>Support for students with special needs in most mainstream classrooms consists of <a href="http://www.canberra.edu.au/researchrepository/file/145cc5ef-a45e-461f-b4bf-2b41553fa9cb/1/full_text.pdf">a caring, but unqualified, teaching assistant</a> sitting with a student for an hour or two a day. </p>
<p><a href="http://maximisingtas.co.uk/assets/content/edtareport-2.pdf">UK research</a> has revealed that this model of educational support for disability actually results in poorer educational outcomes for the students. As shocking as that sounds, it isn’t really surprising. </p>
<p>Low expectations of these students means they are very often just kept busy with what they can do, rather than what they could do with the support of a qualified teacher.</p>
<p>Low expectations come with a high price tag. <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13632434.2016.1160211">We spend A$3 billion</a> employing unqualified teaching assistants to provide pleasant but apparently ineffectual company to students with special needs. </p>
<h2>Students learning English as an additional language</h2>
<p>You need English to prosper in Australia. </p>
<p>Migrants, including those who have come as refugees, settle into Australia much more quickly when they gain some mastery of English. Unemployment rates decrease as English language proficiency increases. </p>
<p>But learning a language takes time - <a href="http://daphne.palomar.edu/lchen/CumminsBICSCALPSpringer2007.pdf">around two years to communicate confidently</a> in social situations, and up to seven years to reach the formal written proficiency needed for school and workplace contexts. </p>
<p>The time it takes to learn English is reduced <a href="http://marbleheadschools.org/%7Ejones.bethan/FOV1-00031A01/Course%20Materials/Is_being_a_good_teacher_good_enough.pdf">when you are taught by a qualified English Additional Language (EAL) teacher.</a> </p>
<p>EAL specialist teachers know the answers to questions about English that the rest of us don’t, even when English is our mother tongue. </p>
<p>Why is it “the Earth”, but not “the Mars”?</p>
<p>Why do we say a “big, blue bus” and not a “blue, big bus”?</p>
<p>Why do we get “on” a bus but “in” a car? </p>
<p>Why is it I “saw” you yesterday and not I “seen” you, or “seed” you, or “was seeing” you?</p>
<p>The answers to these questions, and thousands of others, are not “just because”. </p>
<p>There are explanations and this is the speciality work of the EALD teacher.
Yet there is no requirement that children who are learning English are taught by qualified EALD teachers. </p>
<p>And then we wonder why these students make up such large proportions of our students who <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13613324.2013.843521">perform below benchmarks in our national standardised tests.</a></p>
<h2>Adult English language learners</h2>
<p>For decades successive Australian governments have demonstrated their commitment to adult English language learners through the provision of 510 hours of English tuition from qualified teachers via the <a href="https://www.education.gov.au/adult-migrant-english-program-0">Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP)</a>.</p>
<p>About 10,000 adults from refugee backgrounds are enrolled in these courses each year. </p>
<p>510 hours isn’t enough to become proficient in English, but it is an excellent foundation upon which to build language skills for employment and education.</p>
<p>But new tender documents for the AMEP indicate <a href="http://www.tesol.org.au/files/files/563_ACTA_submission_on_draft_RFT_for_the_AMEP_-_final.pdf">the program is about to radically lower its expectations of students</a>.</p>
<p>There will now be a conversation class stream, ostensibly for those who might find “proper” English classes difficult. There will be no requirement for them to be taught by a qualified teacher – any person with good intentions will do.</p>
<p>Michael Michell, president of the Australian Council of TESOL Associations, <a href="http://www.tesol.org.au/files/files/569_ACTA_Media_Release_-_Downgrading_Migrant_English_Teaching_16_Sept_2016.pdf">says</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Without expert teaching, refugees’ and migrants’ once-in-a-lifetime English entitlements will be wasted. The best these classes can produce will be stigmatised speakers of ‘broken’ English on the road to discrimination, unemployment and social isolation.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The bigotry of the state</h2>
<p>We claim that professional, qualified and quality teachers are crucial to improving learning outcomes, and the economic health of the nation. But we pursue policies that don’t put these teachers in front of our most marginalised students. </p>
<p>This is tantamount to state sponsored bigotry. Is that soft bigotry, or hard?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65632/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Misty Adoniou works for the University of Canberra. She has received funding from government organisations to research teacher standards and the resettlement of refugees. She is on the Board of Directors of TESOL International and is a past President of the Australian Council of TESOL Associations. </span></em></p>The government says that quality teachers are crucial to improving learning outcomes. Yet they still pursue policies that don’t put these teachers in front of our most marginalised students.Misty Adoniou, Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.