A different sort of army! - Brendan Nelson refects on new tutorial centre

If information is the currency of democracy, how can any illiterate Australian ever expect to be really free? Yet in Australia today, 1 in 12 children cannot pass a basic year 3 national reading test. The performance of Indigenous students is even more disturbing, where a quarter are incapable of meeting basic reading standards in year three. The Australia Council for Educational Research further documents 30 % of year 9 students lacking in basic literacy skills.

For more than a decade the Reverend Bill Crews has run a remarkable programme at the back of his Ashfield church for kids who can’t read. When not feeding the working poor, counselling prostitutes or keeping drug users alive, Bill has saved young lives in other ways.

Under the direction of Professor Kevin Wheldall from Macquarie University’s Special Education Unit, a dedicated team has taught children how to read. Children from the inner west are collected each day for a morning of intensive one to one reading instruction.

The ‘pause, prompt and praise’ programme uses phonics instruction.

One boy, after five years in the education system observed at his first session, “Oh, it’s the black stuff you read!” Six months later they are able to write and read a piece of poetry. Word recognition jumps 21 months, reading accuracy 16 months and spelling 12 months.

So when Bill came to see me as Education Minister two years ago to set out his vision for a similar centre in Alexandria, I was all ears. Having seen the liberating transformation his team had produced in the lives of many young people, I told him the Commonwealth would commit $1 million to the project.

When an official later questioned where the programme might ft, I replied, “Well. It’s a b .... y good job we weren’t running the Health Department when Fleming turned up with penicillin”.

The real tragedy is that no teacher can teach what he/she doesn’t know. Half the universities training teachers dedicate less than 5 % of course time to reading. Too often that small component lacks scientific rigour, producing teachers who then – through no fault of their own, are unable to introduce students to the basics of reading.

Children passing from primary to high school barely literate fail to fulfil their potential. They are later disproportionately represented in unemployment queues, public housing and prisons.

Memorising the landscape of a word and guessing from context might help, but it is not reading. Reading requires letter and sound understanding – phonics.

Too often it is assumed that children from marginalised disadvantage cannot learn. They can and do when educators believe in them. What kids bring to school with them determines where they start. But what happens in the classroom will determine how far they’ll go. Poor teaching compounds disadvantage.

God bless Bill Crews, Professor Wheldall and their small army of reading volunteers.

Source: South Sydney Herald April 2007 – www.southsydneyherald.com.au