Larry Williams Drive

If Jan Tinetti changes the way we teach kids to read in the way she's hinting she might do, I will rate her as one of the most important ministers in this Government, just for doing the right thing and for the consequence of that. We’ve been having a debate for years now about what the heck is going wrong with our kids’ ability to read in this country. It used to be that Kiwi kids led the world in reading. Now almost half of our kids are below their expected reading level when they finish primary school. Increasing numbers of academics, teachers and schools are blaming the way we teach kids to read because we stopped teaching phonics (which is sounding out the letters to make the word) and increasing numbers of them want to go back to teaching phonics like New South Wales has. Jan Tinetti has just hinted that we might do that. She appeared on Q+A yesterday and made it very clear the evidence points to phonics – or a related form of learning called structured literacy — being the best approach. That hints very