Lowering standards is not the answer to literacy crisis

Government acknowledges the depth of the literacy crisis

The Government today announced it will offer a temporary reprieve to schools concerned about implementing its new NCEA numeracy and literacy standards. Lifting Literacy Aotearoa is not surprised that the delay is deemed necessary, given the dire state of literacy in this country.

“Today's announcement followed a series of trials with Year 10 students that found many did not know how to use capital letters and full stops and did not know there were 60 minutes in an hour. The writing test had the lowest pass rates with last year's pilots recording pass rates of 34 per cent and 46 per cent”.

Given the current poor level of literacy of students entering our secondary schools it is simply unfair to expect secondary school teachers to turn this around in such a short time frame and with NO investment from the government in the evidence based training and extra time and resources that would be required to help these students make progress.

However ….

The answer to our literacy crisis is not to lower standards

We know that the root of this problem is the WAY we teach reading, writing and spelling. Our children are failing because WE continue to adhere to long outdated concepts of how the brain learns to read.

- It is time that we acknowledged this -

We want to see the Ministry of Education, Teachers Council, PPTA, NZEI, our Initial Teacher Training Institutions and ALL political parties come together to address this crisis by implementing instruction that is:

• based on current learning science

• based on the best and most up to date evidence based approach

• aligned with international best practice.

It is inconceivable that in 2023, with the knowledge we now have on how children learn to read, the majority of our primary schools CONTINUE to use the long disproven Balanced Literacy method of teaching. Until we change this we will not change these statistics.