Erica Stanford: Education Minister on poor writing achievement in schools, Writing Action Plan

A lack of surprise from the Education Minister over poor writing achievement in schools. 

New data shows only a quarter of Year 8 students achieved their curriculum writing level last year.  

The Government's launching a new digital tool for students sitting below the standard and introducing more professional development in literacy.  

Education Minister Erica Stanford told Mike Hosking the figures are the results of years of decline and a poor curriculum, which is now being changed. 

She says there's teaching practices where students have to guess words. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
More confirmation that absurd numbers of our children can't read
or do maths properly. Twenty four percent, listen to this.
Twenty four percent of year eight students meet the newly
implemented standards for writing twenty four. So that's seventy six
because I can do maths seventy six percent who don't.
So the Writing Action Plan has been launched along with
all the other action plans to dig ourselves out of
this educational whole. Erica Stanford is the Education Minister back
with us. Good morning, Good morning, mate, explain this to me.

(00:22):
So writing when you start in year three, don't start
in year three. By year three, forty one percent of
people meet the standard thirty three by year six, twenty four,
by year eight. That looks like they go to school
and go backwards.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, does look like that. The longer you stay at school,
the wors the results. And that is the reason for
that is we've had a very bad curriculum which has
now been replaced this year. We've had teaching practices teaching
children to read that make them guess the word and
you know, read the whole sentence and then think about
the context and guess the word. I mean, this is
basically the results of years and years and years of

(00:55):
decline and poor practice in a poor curriculum, and that's
changed from this year. But those baseline and results are
pretty grim.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yes they are. You speak, and I watched you again
yesterday when you were doing a press conference at that school.
You speak of these programs like doctors speak of penicillin.
So in other words, if I give you penicillin, the
cure is there. Do you know that what you're doing
is going to work or do you just hope, like
hell it does.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Every single thing we've implemented it has been evidence based
and already has results. So for example, when we implemented
structure literacy and mandated it across the entire system, that
wasn't just a finger in the one let's hope it works.
That was based on years and years and years, in fact,
decades of cognitive research, and a whole lot of schools
had already implemented it and we could see the enormous
accelerated effect of it. And the same will be with

(01:40):
this writing tool. There's a few things we really struggled
with handwriting in this country because essentially haven't been doing
it enough and we haven't been done it properly. So
the New Handwriting Guide will tell teachers exactly how to
teach handwriting, true new tool that we.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Will right tremendous responsibility on you, and we blame the
schools and all that. Where are the parents in all
of this? I mean maths, I get because maths is funny,
but reading isn't. Where are the parents?

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Well, that is a good question, and I think there's
a couple of answers to that. Firstly, I feel like
there has been a little bit of a Chinese wall
between schools and parents, which is why we launched the
Parent Portal. Here is everything your child will be learning
in year one in English, so you can see, and
here a whole lot of resources you can help out
at home. Now, parents didn't have access to that before.
They were flying a little bit blind. And they turn

(02:27):
up to a parent teacher interview and your kids sitting
right there beside you. It's no longer an an honest
conversation between you and the teacher. It's child lead. For
goodness sake, you know, we've got to give power back
to the parents and say you are demanding customers. You
also have a responsibility when things are falling behind. You
have to do something at home as well. And look,
but you're right, you know we're going to have something

(02:48):
more to say next next, in the next few weeks
about a plan for next year. In terms of engaging
parents in literacy and reading at home. The most important
thing you can do is speak and read to your child.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Well, when you're doing that, we'll get you on again.
Appreciated Erica Stamford, who's the Education Ministry. For more from
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