Motions

Literacy Guarantee Unit

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (11:35): I move:

That this house—

(a) notes the statewide results of the year 1 phonics checks and the improvements that have taken place since the first check was introduced in 2018;

(b) congratulates the staff in the education department’s Literacy Guarantee Unit, and elsewhere in public and non-government education, who have worked hard to assist educators and schools to develop and improve their practice in the teaching of reading;

(c) commends the efforts of professional educators and volunteers in non-government organisations who have been working to improve reading instruction and literacy outcomes in South Australia for many years;

(d) thanks all those South Australians who have helped reform the delivery of literacy programs in the early years of schooling in South Australia; and

(e) encourages the government to maintain the Literacy Guarantee Unit, the year 1 phonics check and other reforms designed to improve literacy outcomes for young South Australians into the years ahead.

I am very pleased to move the motion standing in my name, recognising the extraordinary work of educators and students alike throughout South Australia through a journey of improved reading instruction, particularly over the last five years. The motion reads:

(a) notes the statewide results of the year 1 phonics checks and the improvements that have taken place since the first check was introduced in 2018;

I will talk a little bit about this but, to very clearly put the improvements in a nutshell, in 2018, when the first mandatory statewide year 1 phonics check was undertaken in all government schools, only 43 per cent of our year 1 students, unfortunately, were at the mark—the expected achievement that was anticipated. I will describe what that is in detail later, but, to be clear, only 43 per cent of our students in 2018 were at the level they were supposed to be.

It has been an enormous amount of work. In some aspects, it started before 2018 but was certainly turbocharged from 2018 onwards. The compulsory nature of the check was an important aspect of that, as was the work by teachers, by the Department for Education, by the contributions of people in the non-government sector, by advocates, by parents, by students, and, indeed, by none more than our year 1 teachers across South Australia who changed practice in many cases, who gave the checks a go and who put in the hours in their professional development. There was work done by leaders and other teachers in the school to have whole-school approaches that in many cases were entirely and radically different from those they had before.

Through a combination of heightened awareness of the need for intervention for students who were not grasping the critical building block of literacy that is phonics, and indeed through changed practice in classrooms and in schools, we saw improvement. In 2018, 43 per cent of our students were at the mark; in 2019, 52 per cent of our students were at the mark; in 2020, 63 per cent of students were at the mark; in 2021, 67 per cent of students were at the mark; and in 2022, 68 per cent of students were at the mark. The figures for this year have not yet been publicly released, but I understand that in the coming days or weeks we will have news that we have surpassed 70 per cent.

As I understand it, 71 per cent of students are achieving the expected standard in our phonics checks in 2023. The minister will, I am sure, correct me if my news is in error in any way. However, it is good news and it is good news that all in this house can share in the celebration of this, along with our teachers, along with our department, along with the professionals who have helped, and along with the many advocates who have worked very hard. I go on to suggest in this motion that this house:

(b) congratulates the staff in the education department’s Literacy Guarantee Unit, and elsewhere in public and non-government education, who have worked hard to assist educators and schools to develop and improve their practice in the teaching of reading;

(c) commends the efforts of professional educators and volunteers in non-government organisations who have been working to improve reading instructions and literacy outcomes in South Australia for many years.

I want to particularly highlight the efforts of a couple of organisations. I am going to get in trouble because there are others as well. Dyslexia SA has been on this track for many years. A couple of years ago, Dyslexia SA folded itself into the other organisation that I will name, which is SPELD. Prior to that, they were an advocacy group particularly concerned about students with dyslexia and other learning difficulties and the way that the department and the whole sector, I think, for many years, the whole language approach to the teaching of literacy, had failed their children and was not giving their children every opportunity to succeed.

We talk a lot about the need for wellbeing in schools. It is a particular focus of the new minister, and it was a focus of mine as well. It is a focus of the department at every stage, but that is not, in my view, something that should ever be taken in opposition to a focus on literacy. There is no student whose wellbeing is going to be supported through school if they are unable to read and unable to access the rest of the curriculum and the opportunities for learning that they can experience through school. Without a focus on getting the basic building blocks of literacy correct in the early years of schooling, that student's wellbeing is a matter of luck.

Students with dyslexia and other learning difficulties will struggle in school unless there is an evidence-based approach to the teaching of literacy. Phonics has to be part of that, but for many years it was not. Particularly through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the universities decided that it was unfashionable, and it was not really reintroduced as something that was departmental policy until much more recently.

In about 2015 or 2016—I think the Deputy Premier was then the minister—there was some work done on approaches to reading instruction. I think Jayne Johnston was the head of schools at the time. She gave evidence in an estimates hearing in this room that the department was going to focus on the big five of reading. They are sometimes described as the big six, but one of them obviously is phonological awareness and one of them is phonics instruction.

In an explicit fashion and using systematic synthetic phonics as an approach, the department's policy was still on a journey. In 2017, the federal government's education minister was Simon Birmingham. I think it was him at the time, having replaced Christopher Pyne, but if it was Mr Pyne I apologise to him. Ministers Pyne and Birmingham had the federal government on a course where it was certainly announced in the first half of 2017 that the federal government was seeking that all states have phonics-based instruction as part of their approach to literacy.

I commended at the time the Deputy Premier, when she announced as education minister that there would be a trial in South Australia. Fifty schools signed up to a trial of a phonics check. This is something that was not new. Nick Gibb, former minister for schools in the UK, had introduced this in English schools some years earlier. He had been to Australia and encouraged Australian jurisdictions to take it up. Indeed, through the efforts of Dyslexia SA and SPELD, advocacy for the phonics check was important, and I will tell you why in a minute.

To the point, the former Labor government, in the last eight months of their 16-year term, did have a trial. The trial initially was headed in the wrong direction. It was aimed at self-selecting schools, to be done at a reception level, which is a time that was not seen as a relevant equivalent to the UK check because students were not at that point of learning the letters and the language in the Australian curriculum.

With my encouragement, and the encouragement of Dyslexia SA and SPELD, the then minister, now Deputy Premier, brought in a second set of eyes. She brought in Jennifer Buckingham, who I think at that stage was at the Centre for Independent Studies, to have a look at what the department was doing. With her advice, firstly the check was moved from reception to year 1 and the reference was taken to Flinders University to analyse how the trial went. The Flinders University researcher—I think it was Anne Bayetto; forgive me if I have misspoken her name—undertook an analysis of the trial.

This was all in 2017. This is the work the former government did and for which I gave them credit throughout our term. At the same time as the government was announcing the trial, the Liberal Party was announcing a full suite of measures: a literacy guarantee package of measures, including the year 1 phonics check being mandatorily rolled out to all government schools; teacher training; literacy coaches through our Literacy Guarantee Unit; and literacy guarantee conferences in school holidays that would be accessible by all teachers, including those in the non-government sector.

We also announced increased support for breakfast programs because hungry kids do not learn well, and too many of our children go to school hungry each day. There were a range of measures in this package, 10 measures aimed at improving the teaching of literacy and early years reading in our schools.

For months and months, we urged the government to release the Flinders University analysis of the trial in 2017, and they declined to do so because this was not something that was universally welcomed. It was uniquely welcomed in the fact that it had bipartisan support from the opposition, but many in the sector and the union—certain principals, certain people in certain sections of the department and, indeed, a number of teachers—were very sceptical of this approach. They were very resistant to the approach.

The Labor Party did not commit to it in government until, and I kid you not, sir, two days before the 2018 state election, by which time even the Xenophon party had committed to it all, but they did commit to it and it was a bipartisan project. I certainly appreciated that they made it easier through our four years of government in rolling out these checks, and the other package of measures, that it had the support of the Deputy Premier as shadow minister for education and then the current minister as shadow minister for education when he became the shadow minister.

It being a bipartisan project throughout the entirety of its tenure has assisted in ensuring that the department bought into it and that teachers and other stakeholders gave it a go. But I tell you what, the thing that meant that teachers gave it a go more than anything else is that they sought results in the classroom. From that first check in 2018, when only 43 per cent of students met the mark, I spoke to literally hundreds of teachers one on one in groups, visiting schools over the subsequent 12 months.

Almost all of them identified that if they had been delivering phonics instruction in the classroom they were very supportive. Those who had not been, identified that there were students who would have slipped through the cracks; they were surprised that they had not done as well as they expected. They thought that they would do more. There are 40 words on the flashcards; they have to name 28 to be at the standard. Many students were not getting to 28 who those teachers thought would. That gave them pause to think, and they bought in.

No teacher in our system would go into this work with the calling they have, and the approach to their students and the care for the students they have, attempting to do things at anything less than in the best possible way. But they had been taught at university—it was part of the culture—that phonics was not the best way to teach these kids and so that was confronting for many people. Every teacher who had a look at this and identified that there were improvements in the classroom that were capable of being delivered through a different approach then took the opportunity to do so.

The Marshall government invested in more than $13 million, as I recall, in 2018 in providing particular professional development opportunities, backfilling classrooms for TRTs so that teachers could not only get some training in the phonics check ahead of the delivery of the check. We supported TRTs in the classroom whilst teachers were delivering the check one-on-one with their students in a very sympathetic and compassionate environment.

There was also TRT time for schools in the weeks after the check so that those students who had been identified as not meeting the mark could have particular interventions planned for them by their classroom teachers. That was at significant expense, and it was an expense that was opposed by a large number of people. As I recall, it was questioned by the Labor Party at the time although, as I said, by and large they supported it in a bipartisan fashion.

Many people helped along this journey, and I commend those professional educators and volunteers. As per the motion, I also thank all those South Australians who have helped reform the delivery of literacy programs in the early years of schooling in South Australia. It is a significant list of people, and I am not going to name names. Many of those teachers and leaders who have been doing the work in phonics through their own research and their own understanding of the best way to teach reading prior to 2018 put their hand up and said, 'I would like to lead work in helping to assist my colleagues to get the most out of this opportunity,' and their work is to be credited.

There are a couple of non South Australians, and I mentioned Jennifer Buckingham before, but I also want to highlight the work of Professor Pamela Snow, who did some really important work with the South Australian education department through 2020 and 2021. Indeed, through her work—it was a review of the Running Records program that had previously been the broadly understood way to judge how students were reading—it was identified that that was not an evidenced-based and appropriate way that supported an accurate reflection of a student's progress. So, in the COVID year of 2020, we got rid of that as a mandatory check, and the department put it back as a mandatory check in 2021. As minister, I instructed that it be removed as a mandatory check again in 2022, and I understand that that removal has been continued by the new minister for which I commend him as well.

The last dot point is that we encourage the government to maintain the Literacy Guarantee Unit, the year 1 phonics check and other reforms designed to improve literacy outcomes for young South Australians into the years ahead.

I gave notice of this motion at the beginning of this year. It was drafted at the end of last year and, at that time, there was certainly a new government with potentially new ideas. I thought it was very important that we highlight the success of these innovations so that they be maintained by the new government. To this point, they have been. Indeed, as I understand it, the Literacy Guarantee Unit even has a couple of extra coaches now, and I commend the government for their renewed support for it.

I understand the Literacy Day, at the beginning of the year, when we brought together 1,200 principals and literacy leaders from schools around South Australia, has been replaced with a numeracy day. I understand the importance of numeracy. It is the next step in developing those basic skills, but I urge the government to consider that without the foundational building blocks of literacy being successful for all students in our schools, it is impossible to believe that their wellbeing is capably being supported to their full extent.

Our kids need to learn to read, and it requires continual effort from the government to maintain literacy as a priority to ensure that standards are held high and that every opportunity can be taken to enhance the teaching of literacy. There has been an improvement from 43 per cent of our kids to apparently 71 per cent of our kids at the mark, but that still leaves 29 per cent of our kids we need to do more for. Every year, we should be striving to do better.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (11:50): I thank the member for Morialta for his contribution. I move to amend the motion by the member for Morialta as follows:

Remove (a) and insert in lieu new (a):

notes the statewide results of the year 1 phonics checks, and the improvements that have taken place since the first check was introduced in 2017 and expanded in 2018;

Remove (e) and insert in lieu new (e):

commends the Malinauskas Labor government for its commitment to:

a. strengthen literacy education in schools by its strong support for the Literacy Guarantee Unit, the year 1 phonics check, new professional learning resources for staff, and other reforms designed to improve literacy outcomes for young South Australians into the years ahead;

b. improve mathematics education in schools with an improved maths curriculum, an annual numeracy summit, and maths assessment interview trial being introduced in 2024; and

c. improve education quality in schools through the delivery of the government's seven-point plan for teaching quality, which includes making more teachers permanent, scholarships to attract talented people from diverse backgrounds into teaching, banning mobile phones in high schools, empowering principals to lead, encouraging more teachers to take up roles in the country, and supporting more specialist subjects being taught by specialist teachers.

I rise to support the motion as amended and make a contribution on the back of the contribution from the mover of the original motion, the member for Morialta. It is true that there is an uncharacteristic amount of bipartisanship, I think it is fair to say, certainly when it comes to the phonics check and also a number of other policies and procedures that are in place around literacy.

I might first touch upon one that was covered in some detail by the member for Morialta, the Literacy Guarantee Unit, which I think has played a very positive role in increasing and improving the literacy of our students. This government supports it and will keep it. I make that commitment here in this place today. The member for Morialta is also correct when he says that we have actually increased the allocation in that unit, which I think is a positive thing because it can do more of its great work, but it is also an indication, I hope, of the faith and commitment this government has shown in the Literacy Guarantee Unit as well.

I might also touch upon the Literacy Summit which, again with bipartisan support, was introduced by the former government and is being kept by the Malinauskas Labor government. We have also introduced a numeracy summit and we have decided to alternate which of those occurs in person because it is a very big undertaking to get people from right around the state to come to Adelaide to attend in person. It is a huge crowd, which is a really good thing, but we thought it was too much of an impost upon our staff, particularly our rural and regional staff, to every year come to both a literacy summit in person and a numeracy summit in person.

This year, I understand, we did the Literacy Summit in person; next year, it will be the Numeracy Summit in person. The one that is not held in person for that year will be still held but it will be online. So we are not planning on making any changes in terms of removing it; in fact, we are adding a summit around numeracy and keeping the literacy one as well. I think all the feedback we have had has been very positive, particularly around staff from regional and rural areas who, of course, often find it harder to get to those professional development seminars that staff who might work in the metropolitan area can get to much more easily.

I would also like to touch upon wellbeing, which was another matter spoken about by the member for Morialta in his contribution today. Yes, I have sought to make that a priority and a theme of this government and my time, however long that may be, as the Minister for Education. My view of why wellbeing is important is, of course, on a human level: we want our students—no matter whether they are at preschool, primary school or high school—and our staff to be healthy and happy.

I also very much see improved wellbeing as the path to improved results, including in standardised tests, whether it is NAPLAN or PISA or whatever it might be. I think if we have a look at South Australia's performance, or Australia's performance more broadly, in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test and the relative decline we have seen for the best part of 20 years, and you map that against the data that we hold, which is pretty significant now, around the mental health and wellbeing of both the students who take those tests and the staff who teach them, it has been on an inverse decline compared with the position of the PISA and standardised tests generally. I think the parlous state of the wellbeing of young people, and the workforce as well, has had a role to play in how we have performed in those tests.

I certainly do not support and have not in my time so far as the minister supported taking our foot off the pedal in any way on the literacy and numeracy paths that the member for Morialta correctly identified as being vital. It is true, and I agree, that if you cannot read or write it is not going to help your wellbeing. In fact, it is going to be detrimental to your wellbeing because your place in society, your place in the classroom, your place in your community once you leave school will be greatly marginalised and diminished if you are not able to participate in the workforce or all those things outside the workforce for which you need to be literate and numerate.

I think the fact that we have added the maths assessment interview trial, which we announced this year with Lisa-Jane O'Connor, which will start from next year; the fact that we have added a numeracy summit to have in addition to the Literacy Summit; the fact that we have stuck behind and agreed with the position of the former government around the Literacy Guarantee Unit; and the fact that the trial or the pilot, which I think was in about 57 schools, of the phonics check was started by the member for Port Adelaide, the now Deputy Premier, the then Minister for Education, in 2017 and then rolled out by the member for Morialta, shows that in a lot of these issues we are agreed and the position is a very bipartisan one.

The member for Morialta and I have made a concerted effort to work together on as many things as we can in the education portfolio and depoliticise many things that have been heavily politicised in the education portfolio in years gone by. We know that it does not do any good—and, in fact, does a huge disservice to the students out there—if we have the two major political parties fighting over issues around what we do in terms of increasing the literacy and numeracy of our young people. I think we have made a good fist of that.

I think that I have been pretty honest and forthright in backing in the things that both the former government did that we agree with but also moving away from some things that the former government and former Labor governments have done that we do not agree with. I will continue to hold that position.

I might just finish by talking a little about what I have seen of the phonics check and why it is so important and why it works. I have three daughters of my own who are in primary school. My twins are in grade 2, soon to be in grade 3, and of course last year they were part of the phonics check themselves. As the minister, but also as their father, I took great interest in how that process worked and what they got out of it. I saw it as extremely beneficial and I am happy to say in this place that for one of my children, who will remain nameless of course, it did identify a little bit of extra help that might have been needed.

That help was given and the benefits that we saw for her were demonstrable, really demonstrable. It was incredible and, as they say, you can read briefing after briefing—and I am sure the member for Morialta would agree with me on this—but nothing is as powerful as seeing up close how things like this work. I saw it with one of my daughters when the phonics check identified that she needed some extra help and that extra help really accelerated her to help her catch up to her sister.

I commend the amended motion to the house, and I think it is worthy of acknowledgement in this place that those opposite and the government are at one on many issues here. I certainly hope that we can remain as such because a position like that is of great benefit to all the students in South Australia.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:01): For the sake of completion, I think this amendment is a bit unbecoming, a bit unnecessary. It is not as if there is any specific problem with any of the measures in it individually, but this motion was about phonics and literacy and expanding it to all the government's seven-point plan on this and three-point plan on the other and all of the others does take the focus off it.

In the five minutes remaining, I could go through each of the seven points in the government's seven-point plan on teacher quality and identify the ones that are sensible, the ones that are already happening and the one or two that are just plain silly. We could talk about the government's commitment to increase teacher permanency by 10 per cent which is in that and, after two years, I think the government is still as yet unresolved on how one measures what the 10 per cent is and how many teachers are permanent.

But that aside, I want to absolutely commend the minister for two things. While I disagree with his amendment, at least its necessity, I do commend him for what was genuine in his speech in his commitment to maintaining those programs that form part of the literacy guarantee. He explained why he is so committed to them, and they are authentic reasons, personally felt and understood by his analysis of the situation. I commend him not just for speaking about it in the house, but also for the work that he has done as minister to maintain effort so far there. I urge him to continue that; to continue that focus on it, which should be a focus not diluted by other matters.

I think that the minister would no doubt be familiar with the words of Ronald Reagan, a hero I am sure of the minister, who said: 'There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.' I think that is relevant in this argument about whether the phonics check started in 2017 or 2018: it started years before that. It was invented by neither the member for Port Adelaide, nor the member for Morialta, nor the member for Wright. It was first introduced in England and, to the extent that we have taken not just the idea, we have taken their check. We have an agreement with the British government: we get their check and we adapt it for Australian use.

As a result of the Flinders University analysis of the trial in 2017, there were a number of suggestions. The UK sets their standard as 32 right, out of 40, on the flashcards. We were suggested to bring it down to 28, not because our kids are less capable, but because we are doing it earlier in their schooling journey than they are in the United Kingdom; so 28 was seen as an appropriate mark. The other adaptations people will be interested to know—and if this goes to the question about whether the check we are doing now was one introduced by the Labor Party or the Liberal Party—well, it is still the UK check.

We updated the fonts that are used in the training materials, because the Flinders University study found complaints from teachers, as I recall, that the fonts used in the training materials for the check were unfamiliar fonts and so a bit harder to read, so we replaced them with fonts that are in average use in Australian education literature. I do not know if we are talking about Calibri or Times New Roman or Arial, but apparently in the UK they use different fonts. That was a thing that we found as a result of the 2017 analysis.

Also, in the training material we use videos, and it was recommended we update the videos from the UK ones where they have British accents to Australian ones with Australian accents, and so we undertook that and, indeed, more than that, we used Australian teachers. There was an enormous body of work that was undertaken to get this done throughout 2018 because I insisted as the minister that we roll this out in August 2018, that we do it in term 3 2018 because that was what the experts had advised us to.

I think the amendment to point 1 of the motion is a bit redundant, but it is not the important thing. The important thing is what the improvement has been. We have talked about the overall figures, but in the minute remaining I am going to highlight the people for whom it has been most important: for kids who need the extra help, and kids with disability. While 43 per cent of the population were at the mark in 2018, only 14 per cent of the population were at the mark in 2018 if they had a disability.

That 14 per cent last year had improved to 41 per cent, which means that assuming that the trajectory has improved again this year, and I look forward to the minister's advice of whether my 71 per cent figure was accurate and what the others are, it may well be that kids with a disability now are scoring what the whole population did in 2018. If that is the story, The Advertiser should put it on page 1 and who cares who they give credit to; give credit to the teachers. Kids with a disability being able to read effectively—41 per cent in 2022 compared with 14 per cent in 2018; that is an extraordinary story.

Aboriginal students are up from 21 to 40. English as an additional dialect were ahead of the curve to start with, but they remain ahead. Low-SES students had improvement from 18 per cent to 41 per cent, and country students improved from 36 per cent to 62 per cent. Kids who need extra support benefit from this the most. I encourage the government to redouble efforts on what has been a great bipartisan project over the last five to six years.

Amendment carried; motion as amended carried.