Enquiry into the teaching of reading

Pessimistic

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What a waste of (wait for it) Taxpayers money.

Does anyone have any info but aren't reading standards improving every day ?

I read a report a couple of months ago that standards were excellent here in victoria and the answer was quite simple. More teachers and more individual coaching.


So save your money Mr Nelson and just employ more teachers
 

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#2
Pessimistic said:
What a waste of (wait for it) Taxpayers money.

Does anyone have any info but aren't reading standards improving every day ?

I read a report a couple of months ago that standards were excellent here in victoria and the answer was quite simple. More teachers and more individual coaching.


So save your money Mr Nelson and just employ more teachers
Hey heres a radical idea.....


Get off the net and start reading to your kids ..start spending time EACH night reading and getting them to read. Why is the government responsible for the reading standards in this country? You have your child for 5 years before the government does.Do something with those 5 years and stop been selfish.
 

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#3
PerthCrow said:
Hey heres a radical idea.....


Get off the net and start reading to your kids ..start spending time EACH night reading and getting them to read. Why is the government responsible for the reading standards in this country? You have your child for 5 years before the government does.Do something with those 5 years and stop been selfish.
Easy tiger. Did someone hit a nerve ?
 

Pessimistic

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PerthCrow said:
Hey heres a radical idea.....


Get off the net and start reading to your kids ..start spending time EACH night reading and getting them to read. Why is the government responsible for the reading standards in this country? You have your child for 5 years before the government does.Do something with those 5 years and stop been selfish.
I do and I am impressed with the progress the school is making with her. They ask that we read a short book each night and show interest, but not to over do it as they have all the learning they can handle each day at school.

I was actually saying that the schools seem to do a good job from where I am sitting and I think the fed government is on one of it's pointless crusades

Just get the pupil teacher ratio right, and have resources to help those who are struggling. Forget expensive enquiries
 

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#5
theGimp said:
Easy tiger. Did someone hit a nerve ?
:eek: yes sorry just annoyed at all those who think the government and their subsidiaries should be expected to do the parenting.

I havent seen a Jims Parenting service but I am sure its coming :(
 

afc9798

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#6
PerthCrow said:
:eek: yes sorry just annoyed at all those who think the government and their subsidiaries should be expected to do the parenting.

I havent seen a Jims Parenting service but I am sure its coming :(
It's already here, they're called nannies and childcare workers. These are the services where we outsource the care and parenting of our children to another provider for as many hours as humanly possible each week. This way David and Jenny Smith can afford a big screen TV and Foxtel to further the education of their children. Abdication of the responsibility for the raising of children also provides a convenient scapegoat when Taylah-Rae and Iiian (with 3 i's, one is just so common) don't turn out the way we'd like.
 

Pessimistic

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From the age

Sydney newspaper columnist Miranda Devine and a mother whose son was unable to write more than his name by the time he finished grade three are among nine people appointed to a national inquiry into how reading is taught in schools.

Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson announced the committee, saying it was time to cut through the politically correct nonsense and get to the heart of the problem of literacy teaching.

He appointed Yvonne Meyer to the committee after she wrote to him about the problems her son was having in learning to read at school.

"Every year since prep, I have told his teachers that I thought he had a problem, and every teacher has reassured me that he was fine, that he was working well in class, and that he was an average student," Ms Meyer, from Melbourne, wrote to Dr Nelson.

"I don't understand how my son could write no more than his name at the top of the page for all of grade three and still be given a good report.

"I don't know why, when I told her my son did not know the difference between a vowel and a consonant, or when to use a capital letter, his grade four teacher assured me it was not a problem."

Advertisement
AdvertisementDr Nelson announced the inquiry earlier this month after receiving a letter from 26 experts warning that the method of teaching reading was not working.

Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) research director Ken Rowe will head the committee, which includes academics, teachers, parents and Ms Devine, whom Dr Nelson described as a widely-read columnist who focused on issues relevant to Australian parents and families.

Dr Nelson said with one in 12 Australian children unable to pass a basic national year three benchmark test, it was obvious something needed to be done.

"Whatever is happening in Australian schools, it is failing some children, it is failing too many children," Dr Nelson told reporters.

"It is time to cut through the politically correct nonsense and get to the foundation of what is actually happening in Australian schools."

Experts are divided on whether a whole language approach, which encourages students to use visual cues, or a phonics approach that encourages children to break down words into sounds, is better for learning to read.

Dr Rowe said the inquiry would try to cut through any ideological bias on the relative merits of the two teaching methods but said the debate was not a new one.

"The unfortunate thing is that in certain pockets there are ideological approaches to this whole question of how students learn best to read," he said.

"The purpose of the inquiry is to identify good practice that is strongly grounded in evidence-based research."
 

Pessimistic

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Another from the age.

This woman sounds to be elitist and racist by the comments and I note the others in the class seem to have no problems reading

Mother's experience to bolster reading inquiry
By Orietta Guerrera
Canberra
December 1, 2004


In prep, Jake Levin burst into tears when his teacher gave him a work sheet and he couldn't differentiate between the words and the decorations on the page.

By grade 1, he was already a year behind his classmates, many of who came from non-English speaking backgrounds and not the product of two university-educated parents, as he is.

The 11-year-old, whom his mother describes as a "bright boy, who wants to learn", then began refusing to go to school, and his parents had to resort to bribing him to read.

"It got expensive, I can tell you," Ms Meyer told The Age yesterday. "I remember once I said to him, 'I'll give you a dollar for every page you read', and he read half-a-page, and said 'Can I have 50 cents?

"It came down to that, we were paying him by the word to try to make him read - it was such a battle."

But it wasn't until the end of last year, when Jake was in grade 5, that she realised why he could barely write his name. He had been deceiving his parents and teachers by memorising words rather than being able to sound them out and read them.

Advertisement
AdvertisementSo when Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson telephoned Ms Meyer on Monday night to be one of 10 members of the Federal Government's national inquiry into literacy teaching, she did not hesitate.

Dr Nelson yesterday unveiled the terms of the reference of the inquiry, to be headed by Australian Council for Education Research principal researcher Ken Rowe. He will be joined by Australian Council of Deans of Education president Professor Terry Lovat, a rural Victorian teacher Fiona Knight, and outspoken Sydney Morning Herald columnist Miranda Devine.

They will report back by mid next year after investigating how reading is being taught and tested and how teachers are being trained. The inquiry will also include a literature review from national and international research into the best way to teach reading to children.

"Whatever is happening in Australian schools... it is failing too many children," Dr Nelson said. It comes after a long battle between educationalists over what is the best way to teach children to read, the whole-of-language approach - which is largely taught in schools - or phonics-based methods.

After years of being reassured by teachers and experts - "they told me he was gifted, they told me he was lazy, they told me he had learning difficulties" - Ms Meyer decided to do some research of her own last year, and came across a phonics-based method of learning, the Spalding approach.

She then hired a retired primary school teacher to tutor Jake twice a week, using the phonics method. Within six weeks his spelling was at grade 3 level and now, 12 months later, the grade 6 student is able to spell at year 8 standards.
 

Pessimistic

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Media Release from acer.edu.au

4 December 2001

Australian 15-year-olds among the best in the world in reading, mathematics and science

Australian 15-year-olds have achieved outstanding results in the first major international survey of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy skills to be undertaken by the OECD, according to the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER).

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) compared the performance of Australian 15-year-olds with the performance of 15-year-olds in 31 other countries, including USA, Canada, UK, many European nations, Japan, Korea and Russia.

265 000 students from 32 countries took part in the first PISA survey in 2000 in key areas thought to be essential for full participation in adult life. Twenty-eight of the countries, including Australia, are OECD members. Four other countries participated at their own request. In Australia, 6200 students from 231 government, Catholic and independent schools in all States and Territories took part.

Students answered a two-hour test and a background questionnaire about themselves, and principals answered a questionnaire about their schools.

PISA was implemented for the OECD by a consortium of research organisations led by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) in Melbourne. The Australian component of PISA was also implemented by ACER and was jointly funded by the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments.

PISA is particularly significant because the tests were developed by international experts to see how well students could apply their knowledge and skills to real-life problems and situations. Results show how well students can analyse, reason and explain their ideas – skills that will be important to them in their adult lives.

ACER Executive Director, Professor Geoff Masters, said the study provides unique information about how well Australia is preparing our young people for life after school.

"The findings are highly encouraging. There are very few countries anywhere in the world providing 15-year-olds with reading, mathematical and scientific literacy skills above those being achieved in Australia," Professor Masters said.

Highlights of the Australian results:

Only one country, Finland, performed significantly better than Australia in reading literacy;
Only one country, Japan, performed significantly better than Australia in mathematical literacy;
Only two countries, Korea and Japan, performed significantly better than Australia in scientific literacy;
In reading literacy (the major focus of PISA 2000), Australia had one of the highest proportions of students of any country at the highest proficiency level (Level 5) and one of the lowest proportions of students at the lowest level (Below Level 1);
Within Australia, the ACT consistently achieved the highest results and the NT the lowest, but there were other states with results that were not significantly different from the ACT’s or NT’s. There was a large difference between the ACT and the NT in the reading proficiency levels attained. Interstate differences in mathematics and science performance were less than they were in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) results reported in 1996;
All Australian States and Territories performed at or above the OECD average;
Australia’s best students in each of the three domains achieved on a par with the best students in other high-achieving countries. This finding was maintained within all parts of Australia except the NT. Results for the best students were particularly outstanding in the ACT for all three domains, in WA for mathematical literacy and scientific literacy and in SA for scientific literacy; and
There was no significant difference between Australian boys’ and girls’ performance in mathematical and scientific literacy, but girls performed significantly better than boys in reading literacy, as they did in every country participating in PISA. Few countries had significant gender differences in scientific literacy but boys performed better than girls in mathematical literacy in 16 countries.
Areas of concern from the Australian results are:

The relatively low performance of boys in reading, particularly in relation to narrative texts;
Boys from disadvantaged backgrounds were twice as likely as girls from similar backgrounds to be in the lowest quarter of reading scores;
The relatively low performance of Indigenous students overall in the three domains;
The difference in reading performance between students according to their socioeconomic backgrounds; but
Although the above groups had lower results on average, there were many individuals with good to very good results.
For further information contact Petros Kosmopoulos, ACER Corporate Communications Manager on (03) 9277 5561, 0419 335 986 or email: kosmopoulos@acer.edu.au
 

Pessimistic

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afc9798 said:
It's already here, they're called nannies and childcare workers. These are the services where we outsource the care and parenting of our children to another provider for as many hours as humanly possible each week. This way David and Jenny Smith can afford a big screen TV and Foxtel to further the education of their children. Abdication of the responsibility for the raising of children also provides a convenient scapegoat when Taylah-Rae and Iiian (with 3 i's, one is just so common) don't turn out the way we'd like.
Also use childcare and if they wanted to hold an enquiry they could check up on how thier liberal mates are corporatising childcare centres and cutting down on food, staff, toys etc etc

But hey my bias is showing.

When we realised we would need to both continue working to feed our children and our huge mortgage we considered moving to a cheaper area and have a smaller mortgage. But it would have cost a good $40,000 to move including stamp duty. Staying where we are would also give them better opportunities school-wise so its a bit of a trade off.

Couples approaching child rearing age would have mortgages at least twice the size of ours so I guess there will be more child care rather than less
 

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#12
Pessimistic said:
Can anyone tell me what the hell Brendan Nelson is on about ?
He seems to be wanting to find out whether the phonetic approach or the other approach (I forgot its name) is best. It seems obvious to me that a mixture of the two must be used, because English is not written down phonetically, but on the other hand, it would be ridiculous not to teach the kids what sound each letter supposedly makes. So, I don’t see the point of this fun little meeting of the minds.
Pessimistic said:
Dr Rowe said the inquiry would try to cut through any ideological bias on the relative merits of the two teaching methods but said the debate was not a new one.

"The unfortunate thing is that in certain pockets there are ideological approaches to this whole question of how students learn best to read," he said.
Apparently, our literacy levels are the victim of a left-wing conspiracy. I blame the ALP, no wait, the inner-city latte-drinking lefties, no ******** it! I blame the Eureka miners. Bloody licence-burning bastards, they stole our ability to rite korectlee. :mad:

I like the fact that they complain about ideological bias, but they send Miranda Devine. She’ll spend the time blaming literacy levels on the divorce rate, without explaining what she would actually do about the divorce rate. :rolleyes:
 

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#13
I am the Secreatary of the P and C, where my youngest goes.I listen to crap all the time about teachers.The thing I have found all through my kids school life, is that a vast majority of parents can't be bothered.A lot of people don't own books,let alone read a daily paper.The children learn to want tor ead at home.

My kids both could read when they got to school.The eldest the old homer,started reading at 4 by picking up the Melways to look at the footy grounds.Little petal he is.In their classes they were the minority.

I was at a school function last week, where the Principal was saying they just had funding for the Literacy and Numeracy program for Yr 10.Apparently still a lot of kids don't want to read,don't care about maths either.Their parents don't care either.So what chance do the kids have.

Now I will get off my soapbox.
 

Pessimistic

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Thread starter #15
Smoe intretesing stdueis

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't** mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht
frist
and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and
you
can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey
lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro
 

Pessimistic

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Its a bit like when Johnny said public schools are values neitral and parents are flocking to the private sector.

Unless of course kids are expelled for not being up to scratch, or complaining aabout being gang-raped while on a school trip or even worse seduced by the tennis coach
 

Mr Q

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#17
Pessimistic said:
Only one country, Japan, performed significantly better than Australia in mathematical literacy;
Only two countries, Korea and Japan, performed significantly better than Australia in scientific literacy;
If only they hadn't included net in the survey......
 

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#20
BomberGal said:
It's not the reading standards that need an enquiry. I would have thought it was the grammar and writing skills of kids today.

I hate bagging reeding standards and peoples grammer. I always seem to make mistakes when doing it.
 

CharlieG

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#21
- Surely it doesn't matter what works 'better' overall. Teachers should be able to teach both methods, if they are half-decent teachers. Work out what is best for the particular child, and teach the child to read.

- Parents need to come to grips with the fact that reading to kids, and encouraging them to read themselves, is as fundamental as teaching them to feed themselves with a spoon, or toilet training. It's a basic life-skill, something that should be started well before school. I could read at the age of three. To some extent, it's because my parents put the time in at that early age that I topped my school in English every year.
 

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#22
CharlieG said:
- Surely it doesn't matter what works 'better' overall. Teachers should be able to teach both methods, if they are half-decent teachers. Work out what is best for the particular child, and teach the child to read.

- Parents need to come to grips with the fact that reading to kids, and encouraging them to read themselves, is as fundamental as teaching them to feed themselves with a spoon, or toilet training. It's a basic life-skill, something that should be started well before school. I could read at the age of three. To some extent, it's because my parents put the time in at that early age that I topped my school in English every year.
Exactly, both my kids could read before they went to school, my son was reading novels by the time he was 6.

What I worry about these days, is people young & old aren't reading anymore, spending all their spare time on the computer, or playing computer games, I think the computer is actually a curse on mankind, as are mobile phones, just look at how the kids spell now, all bloody sms spelling. :(
 

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#23
mantis said:
Exactly, both my kids could read before they went to school, my son was reading novels by the time he was 6.

What I worry about these days, is people young & old aren't reading anymore, spending all their spare time on the computer, or playing computer games, I think the computer is actually a curse on mankind, as are mobile phones, just look at how the kids spell now, all bloody sms spelling. :(
But thats how language evolves , my son could read before he was 3 and read all the Harry Potter books as they came out.


Computers if used right are fine. My concern is when a kid cant do his homework without one. Or when the teacher calls a maths test they pull calculators out!!!
 

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#24
PerthCrow said:
But thats how language evolves , my son could read before he was 3 and read all the Harry Potter books as they came out.


Computers if used right are fine. My concern is when a kid cant do his homework without one. Or when the teacher calls a maths test they pull calculators out!!!
But that is the problem, they don't go to a library & look up books for reference, they just type a search into google & there it is, we even have kids on BF posting asking for info on something for homework at school, my advice is, get off the computer & do some research yourselves. :(
 

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#25
MightyFighting said:
He seems to be wanting to find out whether the phonetic approach or the other approach (I forgot its name) is best.
This is actually quite serious and needs thouroughly looking in to. For those who think that everything is hunky dory with our education systmem have a go at putting ads in the paper asking for cv's for a secretarial job. The spelling, punctuation and grammar are shocking from the vast majority of applicants.

Supposedly methods were changed in the 60/70's and many people have argued ever since that reading and writing ability has declined. What people tend to forget that its not that long ago that Latin and a foreign language were compulsory in many schools. Its not just English that students are useless at, their grasp of geography, history etc is also a disgrace. A generation of school children have no idea about people such as Farraday, Galileo, Copernicus, Fleming etc Places like Milne Bay, Beersheeba, etc but they have all been taught highly dubious theories on global warning and a complete pack of lies re Australian history. Further due to increasing use of computers at an early age their mathematical ability is very poor.

Do you really think Howard would let thick kids take these tests?
 
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