logo
Sound it out: Victorian children improve reading ‘leaps and bounds' thanks to phonics

Sound it out: Victorian children improve reading ‘leaps and bounds' thanks to phonics

The Guardian18-05-2025

At Spring Parks Primary School, there's usually a steady proportion of prep students who lag far behind their peers in reading comprehension. But this year, every student has scored more than 80% in their tests.
The answer, its principal Philip O'Reilly says, is phonics.
Nine out of 10 government primary schools in Victoria are already using phonics to teach reading two years ahead of the approach being mandated in classrooms, new research shows.
Synthetic phonics teaches children to read by helping them to identify the connection between phonemes (sounds) and letters (graphemes) by sounding them out.
For instance, where children would once learn the word 'cat' by seeing it in a story with a picture or memorising it, they here instead sound out c-a-t – and blend it, into cat.
Daily phonics is due to be mandated for children from prep to year 2 in all Victorian schools by the start of 2027 under the state's revised curriculum, with 25 minutes daily explicit teaching of phonics and phonemic awareness.
The survey of schools, provided exclusively to Guardian Australia from the state's education department, found 93% were delivering daily synthetic phonics and there had been almost 16,000 downloads of the state's Phonics Plus resources since its publication this February.
O'Reilly said prep students had improved in 'leaps and bounds' compared with where the same age cohort were placed last year.
'At first, my teachers thought the lesson plans were quite challenging, but once they actually started doing it … I'm amazed at how quickly we've seen growth,' he said.
'It seems very prescriptive, but it's great for the students, because there's so much repetition that they get into a routine. You could go into a classroom tomorrow and the kids would be able to tell you what you need to do next.
'And the kids are actually recognising the success themselves … It sounds really boring, but they love it.'
Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email
Phonics was introduced in 2012 in the UK and in recent years has seen widespread uptake in English-speaking countries, including Australia. But academics have been divided on its efficacy.
A 2022 study by researchers at UCL's Institute of Education described the way primary school pupils were taught to read in England as 'uninformed and failing children', calling on the government to drop its narrow focus on phonics.
Australia's Centre for Independent Studies, however, has been a strong backer of the method, calling for it to be prioritised in Australia as early as 2017, and research from the London School of Economics has found it is particularly effective for disadvantaged pupils and those who do not have English as their first language.
In Victoria, a new year 1 phonics check, which takes about 10 minutes, is also being piloted at Victorian government primary schools this year, to become mandatory from 2026. About 80% of schools are choosing to deliver the test in term three – one year ahead of schedule.
Anelise Porto, a foundation classroom teacher, said an average lesson involved targeted practice of select letters, which students sounded out before blending and segmenting the letters into words on their whiteboards.
'We 'write it, chin it and bin it',' she says. 'When they write something on their whiteboard, they put it on their chin for teachers to see, and then we can give immediate feedback.
'Assessment tasks happen every two weeks, and with that data, we've been able to see that it's working – we're seeing a huge amount of growth because we're testing so often.'
Victoria is a late adopter of the check, which was first implemented by South Australia in 2018, followed by New South Wales in 2021, Western Australia in 2023 and Tasmania in 2024. The ACT's pilot will be further expanded this year.
The education minister, Jason Clare, has also been a strong backer of phonics in the federal government's latest schools agreement, which ties funding to year 1 phonics and early numeracy checks.
Australia consistently scores above the OECD average in reading literacy according to Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) results but has seen a gradual decline in the past decade, a warning signs that changes are needed.
Victoria's deputy premier and education minister, Ben Carroll, said teachers and principals had shown 'nothing but support' for phonics in schools, which he hoped would lead to stronger reading outcomes.
'Despite providing a two-year transition period, schools are getting on board, and we're excited to see schools embracing change,' he said.
O'Reilly says the regular checks have allowed teachers to quickly identify students who are struggling, or need to be extended.
'At my school, where students are predominantly Vietnamese, it's helpful to have that repetitive structure,' he says.
'Phonics gives everyone the same tools. It's a great equaliser.'

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Leaving Cert history exam looked 'daunting' and rewarded students 'who avoided rote learning'
Leaving Cert history exam looked 'daunting' and rewarded students 'who avoided rote learning'

BreakingNews.ie

time6 hours ago

  • BreakingNews.ie

Leaving Cert history exam looked 'daunting' and rewarded students 'who avoided rote learning'

A teacher has given his first reaction to this year's Leaving Cert history exams, which students completed on Wednesday afternoon. Jamie Dockery, a history teacher at Tyndall College in Carlow, said the Higher Level paper looked like a "daunting prospect" at first glance. Advertisement "Many will have been surprised not to see questions on Charles Stewart Parnell or the Montgomery Bus Boycott," he said. "Those who placed all their bets on these topics — undoubtedly a sizeable number — will be bitterly disappointed." "However, there was much to be pleased with in this paper. The Documents-Based Question focused on the Jarrow March, a topic most well-prepared students would have covered thoroughly. The sources were engaging, and while the contextualisation question – asking whether the march was a failure – was slightly challenging, it was certainly manageable. "The 'Movements for Reform' section featured an interesting question comparing the successes of Michael Davitt and James Larkin, two reformers with shared ideals but from different eras. "Eamon de Valera was widely expected to appear on the paper, given that this year marks the 50th anniversary of his death—and 'the Long Fellow' didn't disappoint. The question was broad, covering his role in the Treaty negotiations, the Civil War, and World War II. Advertisement "Speaking of WWII, its appearance in an Irish context was welcome, as it hadn't featured since 2021. The topic 'The United States and the Wider World, 1945–1989' proved tricky, with challenging questions on the American Dream and the role of religion in American life. However, the inclusion of LBJ will have come as a relief to many. "As with last year's paper, women featured prominently, with questions on Isabella Tod, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Bernadette Devlin, Mary Robinson, Sylvia Meehan, Simone de Beauvoir, and Nadine Gordimer. Overall, this was an exam that rewarded the candidates who avoided rote learning, who didn't cut corners with their revision, and who were able to think on their feet." Mr Dockery said the Ordinary Level exam will have been generally well received by students and teachers, with the Jarrow March also the focus of the Documents Based Question. "In fact, the Ordinary Level exam had many similar (and in some instances, the same) questions to its Higher Level version across the entire exam – I very much welcome the Higher and Ordinary Level exam having similar questions, particularly considering that the average Senior History groups will have Higher and Ordinary Level students learning together in the one class. Advertisement Lifestyle Leaving Cert: French exam used 'challenging vocabu... Read More "When teaching Ordinary Level students, my advice to them is always to focus mainly on the Case Studies for each topic and the key personalities. Candidates who followed this approached will have been satisfied with this exam. "Many of the main personalities from Irish History found their way into the exam including O'Connell; Yeats; Davitt; Roscommon man Douglas Hyde; Collins, Cosgrave and de Valera. Women will also well represented in the guise of Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington and Countess Markievicz and Maureen O'Hara, among others. Eagle-eyed students will notice that many of these personalities appeared in the 2024 edition. "The 'Europe and the Wider World' topics were also varied and offered the well-prepared candidate the opportunity to do well. Just like in the Higher Level paper, the United States topic was not without its challenges, but the inclusion of the Montgomery Bus Boycott here means that the vast majority of candidates should be fine. It was interesting that the Star Wars question included the parenthesis (the Strategic Defence Initiative) to hopefully discourage answers about Luke Skywalker (as opposed to – correctly – Ronald Reagan!) "As a History teacher, my hope for any exams is that it will give the diligent and hardworking student a chance to show off all they know, and this exam certainly did that."

Eight books to get your eight-year-old excited about reading
Eight books to get your eight-year-old excited about reading

Times

time6 hours ago

  • Times

Eight books to get your eight-year-old excited about reading

The National Literacy Trust (NLT) has published the results of its largest survey of young people's book habits — and it does not make for happy reading. A mere 32 per cent of young people (aged 8-18) admitted to enjoying reading in 2025 (the figure in 2005 was 68 per cent). And only 18 per cent of them are reading daily in their free time, half the amount that were doing so 20 years ago. There are gender disparities too, with the sharpest drop-off recorded in boys aged 11-18. And children eligible for free school meals report lower levels of enjoyment than their peers. The NLT described the findings, based on a poll of 114,970 children, as 'deeply concerning'. I would add more adjectives to that. Utterly depressing — and completely unsurprising. It would be simplistic to blame all of this on tech but just as rates of childhood depression, anxiety and self-harm have dramatically worsened since the wide adoption of digital technology, so too has children's ability to concentrate. It's extremely difficult to persuade a child to sit down with a book when there is Netflix, YouTube and Disney+ within easy reach, to say nothing of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, or Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, Mario Kart World and the rest. The most powerful companies in the world have trained their finest minds on the destruction of our children's attention spans. • How to game safely with your kids, by a dad who started aged 4 Meanwhile, the remorseless drive to improve Britain's education metrics has severely damaged English as a subject. It's more about fronted adverbials and box-ticking comprehension exercises than it is about expression, ideas and creativity. It has put my 11-year-old right off — and I'm sure he's not the only one. Publishing has also played its part. There's a formulaic quality to the children's books I see arrayed in Waterstones, which seem to fall into the eat-your-greens category — lots of virtue signalling and moral didacticism — or rely on overfamiliar tropes of dragons and spells, which I'm sure only appeal to a minority of children. I'd love to see some books that meet children where they are now. As the parent of a reluctant 11-year-old reader who only wants to read manga, I believe the drop-off in engagement happens at about eight years old so that's where I've aimed my recommendations. Here are eight thoroughly enjoyable novels that prioritise fun. I've chosen books where the language is playful enough to entertain adult reading companions too, because no child wants a grown-up putting a dampener on their pleasure. • Children's books are getting shorter — here is the proof A laugh-out-loud story about a family secret, a Welsh adventure and an onion-eating competition with three boy protagonists and a guy called Big Trev. Freddie and his two best mates are on a mission that turns into a wild goose chase that lands them on the news in superhero costumes. There are brilliant Rob Biddulph illustrations that perfectly capture Freddie's doubts as he attempts to board a boat or mistakes his granny's knickers for a hanky. The wealth of visual gags makes it ideal for anyone trying to wean their child off David Walliams books — this is funnier and more imaginative. If you need to break out of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid cycle (nothing wrong with it, the latest is a hoot) this book by the polymath Richard Ayoade is similarly full of surreal wit and deadpan jokes, as well as silly pictures. It's a story about a talking book, and is narrated by the neglected book itself, which unloads all its grievances about bent spines and fickle readers who require fire-breathing dragons on the cover. My son was given it by his godmother to get him through my mother's funeral when he was eight years old. It worked a treat and he has since reread it many, many times. Bored Milo finds everything a waste of time: 'I can't see the point in learning to solve useless problems, or subtracting turnips from turnips, or knowing where Ethiopia is or how to spell February.' But then he receives a mysterious package containing 'one genuine turnpike tollbooth'. Next thing he knows, he's 'speeding along an unfamiliar country road' in a colourful new world. This daft masterpiece, adored by Maurice Sendak, has been described as a children's Ulysses. It seized my son's imagination so dramatically that I dream of discovering that Norton Juster turned it into an epic series (come on, Juster estate!). A gripping, inventive series of speculative fiction novels and novellas set in a dystopian Britain where society is segregated by race. In this imagined world, the dark-skinned Crosses are the ruling class while the light-skinned Noughts are like slaves. Against the odds the main characters — Sephy (a Cross) and Callum (a Nought) — fall in love across the divide, which leads them into danger. Often described as a dystopian Romeo and Juliet, it's chewy and funny with complex characters. I've yet to meet anyone, adult or child, who can't be won over by Mark Haddon's ingenious murder mystery about a 15-year-old boy with Asperger syndrome who is investigating the death of a dog. When Christopher from Swindon finds his neighbour's mutt, Wellington, with a garden fork through his chest, he doesn't expect to stumble upon a secret about his dead mother. Like his hero Sherlock Holmes, Christopher — a maths genius — is driven by logic rather than emotion. But what he discovers transforms his ideas about his life and his family, as well as his understanding of love. Haddon's very witty novel is so suspenseful that I heard my son gasp at the twist. This book, much cherished in our house, is so evocative of being a child. It's also written with a real ear for how children talk and think. Gene Kemp was a schoolteacher and clearly an amazing listener. It's about a daring and energetic 12-year-old, Tyke, who fights in class, steals watches, cheats and turns up sheep skeletons. Tyke subverts gender expectations. It was published in 1977 so is nostalgic for parents — but to our son the sheer freedom the children enjoyed back then was amazing. It also has an incredibly perspective-spinning twist at the end. A good one for boys to get their heads round. This dark allegory about Stalinist Russia is still shocking, funny and heart-rending 80 years after its publication. Set in a society where animals are much cleverer than in real life, the pigs start a revolution against their human farmer, Mr Jones. All the animals are supposed to be equal in this new system but the power-hungry pigs, particularly Napoleon and Snowball, quickly gain power and exploit it. My son was moved by the tragic fate of the hard-working horse, Boxer, betrayed by the ideals of Animalism. The first book in the mega-selling trilogy of dystopian novels is catnip for reluctant readers. It's fast-paced, intelligent and cleverly crafted, with plenty of suspense, mystery and romance. The heroine at the centre is the rebellious Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the poorest district of a post-apocalyptic land called Panem, which is supposed to be what's left of America. She finds herself competing in a televised battle royale, the Hunger Games, where teenagers from the 12 districts fight to the death. It paints a pretty bleak picture of a war-ravaged future but it will help children to understand totalitarianism, as well as propaganda.

‘We'll have done it first': what it takes to set a new Guinness World Record
‘We'll have done it first': what it takes to set a new Guinness World Record

The Guardian

time7 hours ago

  • The Guardian

‘We'll have done it first': what it takes to set a new Guinness World Record

Ever since she was a little girl, Sruthy Saseendran wanted to 'achieve something remarkable' – something that would earn her a place in the record books. But growing up in what she describes as a traditional Indian family, that dream had to take a backseat to more conventional markers of success: university, marriage, career. Decades later – after she had married, become a mother and taken a job as a business analyst in Melbourne – she felt the itch return. It was time to do something for herself. So she embarked on a personal challenge: to set a Guinness World Record. Saseendran felt drawn to memory-based challenges and had long been fascinated by aviation. After a lot of research, she set her sights on creating a new world record: naming the most airports identified by International Air Transport Association code in one minute. The process of getting a new record idea approved by Guinness took her a year and three failed applications before the record book finally gave her the green light. So why not just break an existing record? 'I know how much effort and time it takes to set a record, so I really don't want to break anyone's and mortify them,' she says. 'I didn't want to hurt anyone.' Saseendran spent 18 months practising for her record attempt. She built a database of over 17,000 airport codes and assembled a training toolkit that included aviation maps, flashcards, cognitive training apps and good old-fashioned games of chess (to sharpen her focus). She'd set her alarm for 4.30am every day to practise before her infant woke up. As well as memorising codes, she had to learn to speak very quickly so she could verbally identify two airport names each second. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning On 5 December 2024, it all paid off. After one failed attempt, Saseendran created a new world record, naming 95 airport codes before the buzzer sounded. After all that groundwork, claiming her title felt like 'relief'. Saseendran's record might sound obscure, but Guinness is no stranger to niche ideas. Each year, they field around 50,000 record applications, and more than one third are new titles. Australians are among the more enthusiastic record breakers, currently ranking 12th in the world (the US and UK are equal first). For many, devising an oddly specific new record is a more achievable way into the books than running the fastest marathon or growing the world's longest fingernails. A steady stream of new records also helps to keep the pages of the hallowed Christmas gift fresh. Most of the records in the book each year are new, cosying up alongside indispensable classics such as the world's shortest woman and tallest man. New feats also replace records that have been scrapped by Guinness, such a 'longest time with a tarantula in the mouth', which might now be considered animal cruelty. Proposed records need to meet a variety of criteria to get the go-ahead, says Mark McKinley, who vets new Guinness World Record applications. Much like Smart goals, records need to be specific and measurable. You may think your baby is the world's most beautiful, McKinley says, and perhaps it is – but there's no real way to measure that. Guinness must also be able to verify each record. Not all ideas that reach McKinley's desk tick that box. 'We had an application for somebody who claimed to have only ever drunk Coca-Cola their entire life – one, it's probably unlikely that as a baby they were being bottle-fed Coke, but there's also no way of proving that,' he says. Finally: 'The record's got to be breakable,' McKinley says. That means standardised parameters – football records, for instance, must be broken with a fully inflated ball of the same size – but it also means setting the kind of challenge other people want to beat. Saseendran's record idea met all of those criteria. Memory-based records, McKinley says, are among their most popular and there's a 'huge community' of aviation enthusiasts who could be inspired to try for her title. McKinley filters through a lot of record requests and says that suggestions which appear niche at first can reveal large communities of devotees. 'When you start looking into them, you find that not only is this person wanting to do it, there's a whole subculture of people that … will want to beat it.' For instance, McKinley once received an application for the most sausages made in one minute. He was initially dubious, but says 'that record has become so popular among butchers'. Records aren't just about individual achievement. This weekend the New South Wales town of Kyogle, population 2,751, will do its darndest to set a brand new world record: the world's largest happy dance. If they get it right, it will, thinks mayor Danielle Mulholland, 'really put us on the map'. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion It was an idea Mulholland had after joking with a colleague that she'd 'do a happy dance' if she passed a course she was studying. She Googled happy dances and found there had been a mass happy dance featuring 448 participants in Singapore in 2015, but it hadn't officially been recorded by Guinness. So she decided that Kyogle, as a town, should aim to set the first official record by bringing together as many people as possible to dance at the town showgrounds. If you're wondering, a happy dance entails any kind of dance moves made to Pharrell Williams' 2014 track Happy. Those shooting for Guinness glory can choose to have reputable independent witnesses and videographers there to verify an attempt, or they can fly out official Guinness staff to oversee proceedings. The latter option comes with a price tag of £12,000 or A$24,000 – an amount that made Mulholland 'almost stroke out on the spot', especially given Kyogle is using the event to raise money for anti-domestic violence programs, so she has recruited some local lawyers to verify the size of the dancing crowd. If successful, it won't be Kyogle's first entry into the record book – a gardener from the nearby town of Knockrow grew the heaviest pumpkin in the southern hemisphere, an 867kg behemoth, for a Kyogle pumpkin competition in 2021. But creating the mass happy dance record feels extra special. 'London, Paris or New York may come along, and they may challenge the record,' Mulholland says. 'But at the end of the day, we'll have done it first.' Losing records is all part of the experience anyway. In 2018, chef Johnny Di Francesco, who runs Melbourne restaurant group Gradi, set about creating a world record for the most varieties of cheese on a single pizza. At the time, Di Francesco believed he'd be the first to set such a record, but Guinness says a German restaurant snuck in earlier that year. Di Francesco says it was a huge undertaking. Even sourcing that many varieties of cheese was challenging in Australia. Then, over six hours, Di Francesco painstakingly assembled a standard-size pizza with one gram of each variety of cheese. He 'obviously' had to recruit two professional cheesemongers to verify his cheese varieties were sufficiently distinct. It worked out – Di Francesco got the record, cramming 154 cheeses on to a classic wood-fired base. He didn't retain the title. In 2023, a team of chefs from France, a nation with the unfair advantage of being home to many more types of fromage, toppled him with a 1,001-cheese pizza. But Di Francesco is at peace with the loss. 'It's fine,' Di Francesco says. He still feels a sense of achievement for contributing to 'something that someone else wanted to succeed in'. For now, Saseendran still holds her record – but she should steel herself for challengers. McKinley says there have already been five applications to break it. Saseendran can now recite 104 airport codes in one minute – nine better than her official record – but won't be bitter if she eventually loses the title. 'I'm sure I'd be cheering them on,' she says. As she went first, 'my 'brainchild' will hold a cherished place in my heart forever'.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store