Dear Ministers of Education…
The next National School Reform Agreement must ensure all students learn to read and write proficiently.
The statistics are bleak.
The latest NAPLAN data revealed that 1 in 3 Australian children are not meeting reading proficiency benchmarks.
This means there are well over 1 million children in school today who do not have the literacy skills to navigate the world with confidence, proficiency, and dignity. There are multigenerational, economic and health consequences from this preventable literacy deficit.
We have substantial achievement gaps between students from advantaged and disadvantaged families, between those who live in cities and those who live in the regions, and between First Nations and non-Indigenous children.
These gaps should not exist.
“There is no doubt that out-of-school factors are driving part of this equity gap. But decades of reading research show that with the right instruction, almost all children can achieve reading proficiency.”
While students from priority equity groups are more likely to be represented among the group of students who are struggling readers, there are also many advantaged children who are not becoming proficient readers.
We know every child can learn when they have access to an evidence-based education.
We have been involved in lifting the performance of students, schools, and sectors by applying the best scientific research on how children become literate. Now is the time to implement these approaches at a national level so every child in school in Australia can benefit.
We call on Australian governments to ensure the next National School Reform Agreement embeds approaches based on robust research – at scale – in every aspect of literacy education.
The new Agreement must be grounded in the most contemporary evidence on how to improve literacy outcomes, it must be aspirational about what can be achieved, and disciplined in implementation across
six policy reform initiatives.
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