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Victoria’s education department blocked the publication of a taxpayer-funded study into six primary schools that changed their approach to teaching reading and improved their results.
The report, which The Age has obtained in redacted form, studied six government schools that dumped entrenched strategies for teaching reading for an intensively structured approach centred on explicit direction of young students using phonics.
Teacher Maddison Flens with students at Tylden Primary School, which transformed its approach to teaching reading.
The schools transformed their approach to literacy to address plateaued or declining results, and are now reporting gains in students’ outcomes, the study found. It also observed that each school made the transformation without guidance from the Department of Education, with change often being driven by one individual within the school.
“This process of transformation appears to have been driven by key individuals in these schools without any formal guidance,” the report found.
The six participating schools were de-identified in the study, which The Age obtained via a freedom-of-information request, but it included three advantaged schools and three disadvantaged schools. Four are located in Melbourne and two are in regional Victoria.
The report’s authors, from La Trobe University’s School of Education, wrote that amid a debate that has persisted for decades on the teaching of reading, a small number of Victorian schools have independently embraced an approach called “the science of reading”.
The approach is based on the use of “systematic synthetic phonics instruction, regular monitoring of progress, early intervention for students who appear to be struggling, and the use of decodeable books as take-home readers”.
It rejects so-called balanced literacy, which uses a combination of whole-language techniques and phonics to teach reading.
Most of the report’s findings, and all of its recommendations, were redacted from the copy provided to The Age.
The Education Department ruled that full disclosure of the report would “inform debate on a matter of public importance”, but that it “would be likely to inhibit frankness and candour in the making of communications”.
Correspondence between the department and La Trobe University, also obtained using FOI, reveals that the department rejected the authors’ request to publish their report in an academic journal.
“We acknowledge your decision to not allow us to publish the research findings via a peer-reviewed journal in their current form,” lead author Associate Professor Tanya Serry wrote to the department’s executive director of inclusive education, Sharon Barry.
Serry proposed extending the scope of the research to cover the views of policy-makers, as an in-kind contribution by La Trobe, due to the department’s concerns that the research was not well-rounded, but this too was rebuffed.
“If our offer to extend the scope of the research to accommodate department concerns is not accepted, we would be grateful if you could provide advice on how best to inform study participants that the findings will not be published,” Serry wrote.
Barry wrote that the department preferred “to use the current research to further promote the ways that Victorian government schools have adopted evidence-based literacy instruction practices, rather than publishing the research findings via forums or a peer-reviewed journal”.
Serry told The Age that La Trobe’s researchers had believed their report was “a good news story” about schools that have switched to a more evidence-based approach to teaching reading.
But she said she believed the department was hesitant to advise schools on the best way to teach reading, because of Victoria’s policy of school autonomy, in which schools are responsible for their own operations and performance.
But Serry said many schools would benefit from stronger direction on the teaching of reading.
“In other professional areas, people aren’t given autonomy over how to remove tonsils or build bridges. There is best practice evidence about how to do certain things.”
The department did not answer a question on whether it had used the report’s findings to inform schools on the science of reading.
“The study sought to explore the experiences of staff from six Victorian government schools that have undergone, or are undergoing, a transformation process to adopt evidence-based literacy instruction practices and interventions considered important for students with literacy learning difficulties,” a spokesperson said.
Change was initially confronting, but Tylden Primary School was willing to engage with a new approach.
The study, titled Transforming evidence into practice for reading and spelling instruction: A descriptive study of six Victorian schools, was based on a series of in-depth interviews with teaching staff in 2021 and 2022.
Tylden Primary School was not part of the study, but like the schools that were, it adopted the science of reading a few years ago, and believes it is reaping rewards in reading, writing and spelling.
Principal Lee MacDonald said the school had previously achieved good results overall, using balanced literacy techniques, but found it difficult to bring struggling students up to standard.
“My school, we’re pretty solid with our results, but we always felt like there were some children that really struggled,” MacDonald said. “And we were giving them intervention … but children after doing [literacy intervention program] Reading Recovery, seemed to revert to needing further intervention.”
A teacher pushed MacDonald to adopt the science of reading and abandon balanced literacy. MacDonald said the change was initially confronting, but the school was willing to engage with a new approach in the spirit of continual learning.
“I’m an older teacher. That was me looking at this and thinking well I’ve been doing the best job I can for 30 years, and actually there’s a better way,” she said.
More than 70 per cent of Tylden’s students’ reading progress between years 3 and 5 has been well above average in recent years, the school’s NAPLAN data shows.
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