Australian education is built on sand
An interesting, yet shocking article by Chris Nugent backed
up with a set of data from National Primary English Curriculum 2013. It points
out how ‘pathetic’ the current address of Australian education in teaching literacy
skills, particularly in three key areas- English spelling skills, read-aloud
skills, and the English alphabetic(phonic)skills. He found out some, in my
opinion at least, blatantly unbelievable facts such as that half the adult
population in Tasmania is functionally illiterate; reading test scores of yr 4
Australian pupils were the worst out of 27 countries in the English speaking
world;
Up to 8 million Australian workers struggled with basic reading skill
and also that our primary and secondary schools house an additional 1.5 million
pupils who are also struggling with their basic reading and spelling. And
subsequently he points out the enormity of the problem with the education
system by arguing that our national English education has jeopardized the status of curriculums by ‘uniformly refusing’
to systematically direct teachers to test or teach any of the 3 literacy basics
as stated above. He suggested to look
at a set of data from the national English curriculum, revealing how the current education system is lacking
in teaching the above mentioned 3 key areas of English language as follows;
With this ‘systematic negligence’ done by the education
authority, it shows how stark it can be to not even properly mention some of
the most basic elements when it comes to teaching a national language formally throughout the whole nation. What’s
even more shocking is that the figures are reflective on 7 year levels in
Australian primary schools, not just a single year.
He identifies the root of the problem as being an ideology
of whole language ideology, which he
argues that this has removed the literacy basics from Australian National
Primary English Curriculum.
He suggests a following list of summary facts as the backup
as he insists on this ideology precisely having functionally destroyed quality
in basic literacy education nationwide;
- The 2013 national primary English curriculum
by ACARA, is totally unable to help any primary teacher in
the job of teaching children to
either spell or read. Current primary English literacy
curricula at all state and territorial levels are very little better if at
all.
- Basic spelling skills, read-out-loud
skills and alphabetic skills are the 3
core skills which underpin literally every successful writing and
reading task at school or in the workplace. Yet
since at least the
early 1980s, none of
our government sponsored literacy curriculum
documents has contained guidelines to direct
teachers at any level to the systematic testing or teaching of any of
these 3 core skills.
- As a consequence of this neglect,
Australian government education systems at all levels between and
including our kindergartens and workplaces have not systematically tested
or taught the ‘literacy basics’ for some 30 years.
- Even Australia’s illiterate and semi-literate
workers who have been supposedly re- taught basic skills (under the
auspices of those government funded programs run by Australia’s
eleven Industry Skills Councils and DEEWR)
have never been systematically tested and instructed in
any of the 3 foundational ‘literacy basics’ as described in 2
above.
- Since the early 1980s, literacy curricula
throughout Australia have been oriented toward
actually eradicating spelling from the testing and teaching of basic
English at all levels: no other conclusion is possible. Later articles on
this site will elaborate.
- The spelling-for-age level performance of our
school students was last nationally tested all the way back in 1936.
Despite official denials, Australia’s yearly NAPLAN tests do not
conventionally test accurate spelling skill.
- At least 70% of our exit secondary school
students fail industry standards in spelling
- And 72% of our exit primary school students,
in at least Tasmania, fail in accurately sounding out words of 3 and more
syllables: common English words such as consonant, imperative, survival and
Australian heritage words such as Kakadu, Bandiana, Tingalpa.
- After some 30 years of
similar curricula to these, Australia
now has up to 8 million workers with
basic reading problems in its
workforce and at least 1.5 million students
with serious spelling and reading problems in its schools.
To be frankly at the
moment, I can’t really figure out how this ideology has led to underperformance
of pupils in literacy education as I am not loaded with information regarding
it in great details. But I can imagine the need for revision of the current NAPLAN
test in place alarmingly arises as it is controversial in the fact that this
sort of testing has been designed to improve pupils’ performance on a various
aspects of literacy skills and yet some important elements in assessing any
literacy performance are not even covered in the official documentation of the
National Curriculum. Often it is thought that it is important to balance out
the level of performance across all pupils from a various SES backgrounds, with
frequent emphasis on disadvantages of pupils with migrant backgrounds like C.
Ho (2011) states that “My analysis of the My School statistics presents a
sobering portrait of the concentration of students from migrant backgrounds in
public schools in poorer suburbs (p.9). The
complex nature of multiculturalism along with the disappointing
underperformance on national average calls for even more well structured and
systematic approaches to revising the current curriculum. Now Australia is
facing against an array of Mt. Everest to climb over.
Christina Ho (2011) Respecting the Presence of Others: School
Micropublics
and Everyday Multiculturalism, Journal of Intercultural Studies,
32:6, 603-619, DOI:
10.1080/07256868.2011.618106
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