Australian primary English curricula and their planned exclusions

So this principle, regardless of all the ideological arguments, will remain forever as the very first skill of the lot in basic literacy competence. Before we can expect any adult or student to read any word at all, each of its letters has to be written one correct letter at a time until the word is complete. This writing process has always demanded a rigorously disciplined alphabetic process every last letter of the way until each word has been written correctly.

Regardless then, of the chaotic nature of English spelling conventions, no academic argument can stand against the clear primacy of this alphabetic principle as the very first skill which underpins every spelling and every reading activity that confronts every student and every worker every day. That's why a later article in this serieswill have an age performance test of phonic skills for students between the ages of 8.5 to 13.5 years.

More to the point: despite the clear and crucial relevance of the alphabetic principle to the teaching of competent beginning writing and reading skills, no main Australian education authority has ever once surveyed the performance for agelevels of Australian school students for their basic abilities with the alphabetic or phonic principle: not even once in over 100 years.

And this does beg an inflammatory but obvious question about the critical relevance of the qualifications of our English curriculum writers. If none of our authorities have ever systematically investigated the school based emergence of the very first literacy skill of the lot, then how on earth can then they regard their curriculum writers as being validly qualified to direct our teachers on how and when to teach it and to whom?

This however, is still less than half of the problem that Australia's literacy curriculum writers have had with the foundational 'literacy basics' over the past 70 years and more. Let's now look briefly at what these same writers apparently have not known either about the second of the 3 'literacy basics'. This is called read-aloud skill.

The second basic literacy skill: Read-aloud skill

When students or workers cannot read aloud, they cannot read at all. Every parent and teacher knows of the importance of basic read-aloud skill: it is the subject of the second most important test of basic reading skill, especially with students who are in the early stages of literacy development.

Literacy specialists when assigned to problem cases, invariably produce simple and standardised read-aloud tests (a bit like the ones in a later article of this series) of easy through to hard words for students to read. The purpose of such simple tests is to gauge how well the student is performing for his age or school grade. Within only a few minutes, the literacy specialist can tell the parent or teacher how well the 'problem' reader can read when compared to other students of the same approximate age.

Tests like this are so fast and easy to give. They are indispensable as the first quick measure of the basic reading level or reading age of a student with a suspected literacy problem. The surprise again however, is that no Australian education authority has ever surveyed Australian school students for their performance for age levels in basic read-aloud skills either: again, not even once in over 100 years.

So this is now 2 out of 3 vital and foundational basic literacy skills about which our current Australian literacy curriculum writers can know nothing at all of any consequence: no relevant data collected in Australia for over a century does mean that no officially relevant Australian data is available for anyone, anywhere, at any price.

And by now you will have started to guess that the news on the 'health' of the third basic literacy skill is also bad. Your guess is correct. This is the skill of English spelling.

The third basic literacy skill: English spelling