Educational Leadership

The federal government wants training for millions of Australians who lack the basic literacy and numeracy skills required to gain better jobs and increase their wages.

Reading aloud can help young children learn about new words and how to sound them. There’s great value too in providing opportunities for children to enjoy regular silent reading, which is sustained reading of materials they select for pleasure.

But not all schools consistently offer this opportunity for all of their students. We regularly hear from teachers and teacher librarians who are concerned about the state of silent reading in schools.

Both the 21st-century economy and the careers needed to fuel it are changing at an unprecedented rate. Students must be prepared for nonlinear careers, pivoting to match the ever-changing work landscape. We thus need to rethink not just how we teach our students but what we teach our students.

National standards for English language providers were strengthened in 2018 and the regulator is set to ensure compliance.

Using equivalent year levels provides us with a clearer picture of the gap for Indigenous students, who can be up to an equivalent of 7.7 years behind their non-Indigenous counterparts in writing.