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Working Towards a Nationally Consistent Approach to the Collection of Information on Students with a Disability

A recent report produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers under contract of the Department of Education has provided some good news for those with learning disabilities.

In 2008, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed to work towards a nationally consistent approach to the collection of information on students with disability. This approach took the form of a National Model developed under the guidance of an expert advisory group which met in 2010. The National Model was developed to gather comparable information about the numbers of students with disability and most importantly, the level of adjustment provided to students with disability.

This Model consists of a process to identify:
–  school students with a diagnosed disability, or a disability ‘validated’ by an Education Authority, as defined by the Disability Discrimination Act (1992), and then
–  information on the level of adjustment provided for these students. The adjustments are classified as – extensive,
substantial, supplementary or no adjustments
– Supplementary information on the type of disability under four groupings was also collected – physical, cognitive,
sensory, and social/emotional and the extent of adjustments (measures or actions) taken by a school or provider to
assist these students to access and participate in education on the same basis as students without disability. Collecting
information on student‘s disability is not the focus of the National Model, however, it provides more context to the
students‘ needs for adjustments in schools and provides a level of detail that will be valuable to educators and policy
makers.

To view the report in full please click here.

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Study into the Early Childhood Development Workforce By the Productivity Commission

SUBMISSION

 

Those in the ECD Workforce play a critically important role in potentially influencing the development of oral language, memory, fine and gross motor skills, pre-literacy and literacy skills of the children with whom they work. High quality, extensive training – detailing the knowledge, skills and understandings relevant to children’s early childhood development is essential. ECD workers need to have a well-developed understanding of the precursors to successful social, emotional and academic development across childhood. AUSPELD provides expert advice in the areas of literacy and learning and therefore comment will be made specifically regarding these key developmental domains.

 

About AUSPELD

 

The Australian Federation of SPELD Associations (AUSPELD) represents all state and territory SPELD Associations. These organisations, in turn, represent and support the many thousands of children and adults struggling with both learning difficulties and disabilities throughout Australia. In addition to providing advocacy and support for individuals with learning difficulties and disabilities, AUSPELD also promotes evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning for all children and adults. Over the last ten years a primary focus of the state SPELDs has been to prevent literacy failure, particularly amongst our most vulnerable children.

 

AUSPELD provides services to a range of professionals including early childhood teachers, education assistants, childcare workers, occupational therapists, speech pathologists and educational psychologists, as well as families and individuals. Through its state-based members, AUSPELD responds to in excess of 1,000 calls per week from community members and to a similar number of requests for information and support via email and website contact. State SPELDs also provides training, resources and support to over 30,000 teachers, principals and allied professionals working in schools and other organisations throughout Australia each year.

 

AUSPELD contributes to state and federal inquiries, forums and government departments on a wide range of issues related to improving literacy outcomes. AUSPELD is well-positioned to comment on the role of the ECD workforce on the development of children’s literacy skills. This submission will focus on the need to improve training in pre- and early literacy acquisition for ECD workers, the importance of an integrated approach to literacy and learning across early childhood service providers, and ways to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of the ECD workforce.

RELEVANT TERMS OF REFERENCE

 

The Early Childhood Development Workforce and The Schooling Workforce

 

1. Factors affecting the current and future demand and supply for the ECD workforce, and the required mix of skills and knowledge, including:

 

(a) Delivery of fully integrated ECD services including maternal and child health, childcare, preschool, family support services and services for those with additional needs.

 

Perhaps one of the most effective ways that the poverty cycle can be broken is through education and children are most likely to achieve educational success if they become literate. The protective factors and risk factors for literacy success or failure are established in the early years and there are a range of ECD workers who, with appropriate training, could ensure that children developed the pre-literacy skills necessary for literacy success.

The Early Years Learning Framework – “Educators: Belonging, Being and Becoming” – published and distributed by DEEWR in 2010 provided a valuable framework for discussion and planning for members of the ECD workforce.  It was not (and did not pretend to be) a curriculum, syllabus or overview of the skills, knowledge and understandings that children need to acquire during the early years; or professional and strategic advice on how best these skills should be taught. In the past decade a great deal has been written, and there has been numerous international inquiries (NRP, Rose Report, Nelson, etc), clearly outlining the components of appropriate pre- and early literacy skill development and what needs to be provided to young children to ensure that their early language and literacy skills develop effectively. Unfortunately, very little of this information is ever provided directly and succinctly to members of the ECD workforce. Many ECD workers report a lack of confidence with respect to their ability to provide sound learning experiences to children to target the development of their early reading and writing skills and this is simply because they have not been provided with the appropriate skills.

 

Research suggests that children who become successful readers and writers are those who have been exposed to a language-rich environment in their early years. Children who are not provided with explicit instruction in vocabulary (building knowledge and understanding of words) and phonological awareness (the ability to distinguish and manipulate the sounds in spoken words) are at a significantly increased risk of struggling with literacy acquisition throughout their schooling. All children, but particularly, those children at greatest risk, require robust instruction in vocabulary, language comprehension and phonological awareness. They also require explicit, intentional, multi-sensory, systematic teaching of foundation-level literacy skills (such as a structured synthetic phonics program) from pre-primary (age 5 years).

 

There is strong evidence to show that there is a vast divide between the language experiences of children from different socioeconomic levels, and that these differences place children from low SES backgrounds at increased risk of academic and social difficulties. Graves and Slater (1987) found that year 1 students from high SES backgrounds had approximately double the vocabulary size of students from low SES backgrounds. Hart and Risley (1995) showed that not only do children from low SES backgrounds have reduced vocabularies; they are exposed to much fewer positive verbal interactions than children from high SES backgrounds.

 

The ECD Workforce has the opportunity to affect the volume and quality of oral language input children receive through the education of parents (by encouraging positive and appropriate parent-child interactions), and by intentional teaching of children. In order for parents to be provided with accurate and evidence-based information (including games, strategies, songs, etc) regarding language development, it is essential that the members of the ECD Workforce providing this information be well-informed.

 

Over the past thirty years the prevailing ideology in early childhood education and care has been that children learn best through play. This has therefore influenced not only policy and practice, but the development of resources, the physical layout of early childhood environments and the response to the needs of children demonstrating developmental delays. Obviously, the inclusion of play in early childhood centres is essential but for children with developmental disabilities, the lack of structure and the lack of intentional teaching have often added to their difficulties.  The fact that ECD staff have often not been trained in delivering programs that are more structured, sequential, intentional and responsive also means that when asked to do so, they feel both out of their depth and also uncomfortable from a philosophical point of view.

 

(c) The availability and quality of pre-service education programs, including through undergraduate and postgraduate education and VET, and consideration of training pathways.

 

AUSPELD is an expert provider of literacy training to educational institutions. It is our observation through providing professional learning sessions to school staff that many teachers and support staff lack confidence with respect to their ability to teach literacy skills. As indicated earlier in this submission, there remains a very strong focus on play-based learning in early childhood education and child-care facilities throughout Australia. This is promoted to the exclusion of other approaches and fails to acknowledge the wealth of research evidence that suggests that those children considered to be at greatest risk do not respond well to unstructured, open-ended tasks.  These children fall further behind their peers, become disenchanted with school and frequently display behaviour problems. Current pre-service education programs largely advocate for play-based, student-directed methods to the exclusion of any form of structured learning. As such, many teachers enter the workforce with little understanding of the science behind reading development and the strategies necessary to build strong literacy skills in their young students.

There is overwhelming support – both from current academic research and from practice – to support the view that all children benefit from teaching that is explicit, structured, sequential and multi-sensory. Pre-service training for ECD workers (especially teachers and teacher assistants) should focus on these key components in addition to the critical elements of effective reading instruction (Rose Report, 2006) which includes:

•      explicit and systematic phonemic awareness instruction

•      systematically sequenced phonics instruction

•      guided  and repeated oral reading with appropriate error correction and feedback to improve reading fluency

•      direct instruction in vocabulary and reading comprehension strategies

 

It is our hope that the inclusion of explicit skill teaching in the early years will help to prevent the high (52%) level of functional literacy problems currently experienced by Australia’s 15 to 19 year olds (ABS data, 2006).

 

 

 

We would be happy to address any of our comments in greater detail or respond to any queries from the Commissioners. Thank you.

 

Signed

 

 

 

 

Mandy Nayton

President

AUSPELD

30 January 2011

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Education Disability Standards Review Underway

MEDIA RELEASE –  15 February, 2011

The Gillard Labor Government is taking action to help remove barriers to educational achievement, with a review of Disability Standards for Education.

Minister for School Education Peter Garrett said recent figures show the numbers of funded school students with disability increased by more than 20 per cent in the four years from 2005 to 2009.

“Today I’m releasing a discussion paper inviting submissions to the Review, in a move to help ensure a more inclusive Australian society which enables people with disability to achieve their full potential,” Mr Garrett said.

“The Disability Standards for Education have been in place for five years and it’s time we looked at their effectiveness in giving those with disability every opportunity to succeed in the education system.

“School students with disability have steadily increased as a percentage of the total school population. In 2009 there were over 164,000 students with disabilities in Australian schools that received support by education authorities.

“It is central to Federal Labor’s belief that all students, regardless of their personal or social situations, have access to the very best education we can provide so that they can pursue their life’s aspirations to the fullest.

“This discussion paper will help us determine how effective the Disability Standards for Education are in practice and whether they need to be amended.

“I encourage people with an interest in improving the education and training experience for people with disability to make a submission to the Review.”

Senator McLucas welcomed the review of the standards.

“People with disability deserve the same opportunities as other Australians in their local community,” Ms McLucas said.

“The Disability Standards for Education help to ensure that people with disability enjoy the benefits of education and training.”

The Standards are designed to assist people with disability to access and participate in education and training opportunities and help eliminate discrimination in education and training.

The Standards also clarify the rights of students and the obligations of education providers, pre-school, school and tertiary, under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.

The Australian Government is also conducting a broader Review of Funding for Schooling, which is examining all funding to all schools including funding allocations to ensure students with disability can access a quality education.

Information on the review, including the discussion paper, is available at www.deewr.gov.au/DSEReview .

As part of the review process, the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations will conduct face-to-face consultations with stakeholders in each capital city.

In addition, the department will engage in a series of broader consultations with schools-focused disability organisations on education issues affecting school students with disability.

THE HON PETER GARRETT MP

Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth

SENATOR THE HON JAN MCLUCAS

Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers

 

Minister Garrett’s Media Contact: Cameron Scott 0448 346 942

Senator McLucas’ Media Contact: Belinda Featherstone 0408 743 457

DEEWR Media: media@deewr.gov.au

Non-media queries: 1300 363 079

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Opportunity to Improve Support for Students with Learning Disabilities

In a recent media release The Hon Peter Garrett, Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth announced the formation of a working group to provide early advice on assistance for students with a disability. Minister Garrett is specifically interested in identifying strategies that could assist school students with special needs both in the classroom and at school generally. He indicated the working group will identify effective, priority approaches to improve the educational experience of students with disabilities.

At this early stage there is no specific mention of dyslexia, dysgraphia, or any particular disability type, within the working group’s terms of reference. It is, however, viewed as an important opportunity to raise the significant issue of students with dyslexia, and other learning disabilities, in schools and the current level of disadvantage they experience. In order to ensure that this issue is raised and considered by the working party, please send a submission (no matter how brief) to schoolsfundingreview@deewr.gov.au or write to:

The Secretariat
Review of Funding for Schooling
Location C16MT4
GPO Box 9880
CANBERRA ACT 2601

The closing date for submissions to the Review has been extended to Thursday 21 April 2011.

Alternatively, please send your comments, thoughts and suggestions to support@dsf.net.au and we will include your comments with our submission.

More information on the review of schools funding is available at
http://www.deewr.gov.au/Schooling/Programs/Pages/FundingReview.aspx).

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Cynical Exploitation of Special Needs Children

Baroness Mary Warnock laid the foundations for special needs education thirty years ago. Here she reveals how her seminal report has been betrayed by schools who have exploited children to meet their own financial ends.

Thirty years is a long time in politics. It is high time that a Committee of Inquiry, or even a Royal Commission, were set up to recommend a fresh start on Special Educational Needs. This was the recommendation of the All-Party Commons Select Committee under Barry Sheerman in 2007 and it should be followed up now. This week’s damning Ofsted report is enough by itself to justify starting again.

When, as chairwoman of the Committee of Inquiry in 1978, I published what became known as the Warnock Report, things were totally different. It was only a few years since severely mentally disabled children had been deemed educable at all, and the concept of a continuum of educational needs, from the most severe and permanent to the relatively minor and remediable, was new. The educational cuts of the Eighties were a mere cloud on the horizon. We were still, just about, in the era when things could be recommended on the grounds of their educational merit, without too much calculation of costs.

So though the committee knew that its recommendations would not be cheap, it never thought that, as the Ofsted report appears to show, children’s supposed special needs would be exaggerated and exploited in order to attract more money for schools; still less in order to allow schools to slither out of their responsibility to ensure that as many children as possible achieved a respectable standard of literacy and numeracy, and a reliable understanding of how they ought to behave.

It was the idea of the continuum of needs that gave rise to the belief that the committee had recommended that all children, whatever their disabilities, should be educated in mainstream schools. What the committee actually recommended was that the large number of children with moderate learning diffculties already in mainstream schools should be identified, and their needs provided for where they were. We also thought that this would enable more children to be taught in mainstream rather than special schools because provision for their needs would now be better, and would become part of the recognised mainstream provision.

But the commmittee as a whole never proposed that all children should be taught under the same roof or that special schools should be abolished. This was, and remains, an extremist position.

We worked on the assumption (the figures being provided by the then Department of Education and never challenged) that about two per cent of school-age children had severe learning or other difficulties that affected their education. But that as many as 18 per cent more than these had educational needs that went beyond the “normal”. It was these children (briefly known as “Warnock Children”, rather to the dismay of my own five) who had hitherto been much neglected and who were supposed to have their needs met in mainstream schools by the provision of extra help and extra monitoring of their progress.

It was for these children that mainstream schools would be given extra money, for specialist teachers or for classroom assistants, for adaptation of school buildings or even for the setting up of units or withdrawal classrooms on the campus, for use by the mildly autistic, or what used to be called the “maladjusted”. We had been warned not to discuss the needs of the dyslexic, dyslexia being at that time widely regarded as a condition invented by the middle classes as a cover for the stupidity of some of their children.

Nor, unbeliveably, were we permitted to point to social deprivation as the cause of many special educational needs, though the link between deprivation and the development of language was as obvious then as it is today, and indeed the number of children eligible for free school meals was then, as now, taken as a rough indication of how many children in a school would have special educational needs.

This link between deprivation and educational failure or special needs struck me then as of the greatest possible importance. And in this respect things have not changed. We were not allowed to mention the link because the myth still persisted that social services and the teaching profession were two completely different sources of provision, dealing in completely separate things, or meeting totally different needs.

And though we on the committee continually urged the two services to work in partnership (what in Blair-speak became “joined-up thinking”) we failed, as did the Blair government, to make any difference to this insane dichotomy. If you believe, as I do, that education is the only way out of the under-class, then you cannot help believing in the link. But this also has a profound effect on the duty of teachers to engage their pupils in the educational process, and to inspire them with educational ambition.

By this I do not mean that they should encourage them all (or even half of them) to go to university, but that they should instil in them a desire to do things well, and understand them better and discuss them articulately. When pupils are thus excited by what they learn, not bored, they behave better, and can indeed be taught to do so. Linguistic poverty is a prime cause of boredom and of disruption and violence in the classroom.

Teachers have a huge responsibility for developing the language of their pupils, both spoken and written. I do not believe that teacher-training puts enough emphasis on this, nor on the connection between linguistic poverty and behaviour. Teachers have to tackle both together, and must be ready themselves to articulate the limits they will impose on rudeness, violence and disregard for the feeling and interests of others. If teachers are not explicitly to introduce, by precept and example, the basic rules of civilised, morally good behaviour, then they should quickly leave the profession.

But of course a teacher who teaches in this way, though she recognises that she will have far more difficulty with some children than with others, is fundamentally optimistic. She believes that most children can become engaged in and excited by the process of learning, can want to succeed, can like their teachers enough to want to please them, can therefore improve their performance, even if by halting steps and slow.

There will be some children who face obstacles too great for the ordinary teacher to remove, but these will be relatively few. For them, specialist help is required, either in the short or the long term. (For instance, only specially trained teachers can help severely dyslexic people, children or adults; without special training, a teacher may do more harm than good, but when she has had it, she may achieve wonders.)

Therefore it is absolutely necessary for the non-specialist teacher to be able to identify those children who genuinely need specialist help. Perhaps the greatest obligation of teacher-training is to make such identification central, a matter of routine but constant vigilance and good judgment.

But this is a far cry from the present trend, if the Ofsted report is to be believed. A good teacher believes in her ability to engage the imagination and therefore the co-operation of her pupils, however unpromising they may seem. A good teacher and a good school flourish on hope. A bad teacher gives up at the first setback and runs to the school Senco (special educational needs coordinator) asking for help. And now she is positively encouraged by management to do so, for the sake of a cash injection, and so that her pupils need not be counted among those whose examination results will be made public.

This is institutional pessimism, an institutional announcement that the pupils for whom extra is sought are, deep down, beyond hope and so little worthy of respect that they may be used merely as a means to an end.

The concept of special needs and its related statement (the supposed guarantee to a parent that her child will get the help he needs) must urgently be overhauled. It may have been inevitable from the beginning that these ideas would live on to be abused. At least from the 1981 Special Educational Needs Act, which made clear that no extra funds would be available for its implementation, we should have foreseen the future. However that may be, the Ofsted report suggests such a cynical reversal of the benign intentions of the original committee and the subsequent legislation that it cannot simply be overlooked. A fresh start must be made.

By Baroness Mary Warnock

17 September 2010

www.telegraph.co.uk

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National Strategy for Early Literacy – A Canadian Perspective

Over the past decade numerous reports and inquiries have been commissioned by Governments worldwide to investigate and report on the incidence and prevention of literacy failure. Inevitably these initiatives result in recommendations targeting the early years; a reflection of the truism that ‘prevention is better than cure’.  A common theme in the reports tabled in the USA, the UK, Australia and New Zealand is the need to provide instruction that is evidence-based. In addition, the need to improve the quality of literacy-related instruction through access to improved teaching resources, clearly articulated curricula and teacher knowledge is stressed. Central to all the reports is the need to improve pre-service and in-service training in the areas of reading development and reading instruction.

Canada is the most recent English-speaking country to develop a nation-wide response to the growing incidence of literacy failure. The report entitled National Strategy for Early Literacy was prepared by the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network and was tabled in Parliament in October of 2009. As with earlier reports there is a strong emphasis on evidence-based practice and, in particular, the report suggests that most literacy challenges can be prevented through an appropriate mix of: 1) effective instruction; 2) early learning experience; 3) systematic assessments (to identify any children who experience difficulty at an early age); and 4) appropriate intervention.

The following is a reduced version of the Summary Report:

Introduction

Literacy impacts all aspects of modern life. For individuals, it is the foundation for academic, financial, and life success; for nations, it is the key to a healthy democracy and a flourishing economy. Adults with poor literacy skills are less successful in school, work less, and are unemployed longer. They require more social assistance and are more frequently in poorer health. Moreover, it is clear that the economic and social importance of literacy skills is increasing as our nation and workforce face increased global competition.

Barriers to Literacy Improvement

Through the inquiry process, a number of systemic and individual barriers to successful literacy outcomes for Canada’s children and youth were identified. These barriers replicate the obstacles faced by children in Australia.

Important systemic barriers include:

1. The inability of many children to access high-quality early childhood education and care programs. This creates a particular challenge for those children who are most vulnerable to poor literacy outcomes because they lack adequate supports through their home and neighbourhood environments.

2. The inability of many children to access libraries, and other supporting programs and services, again with access challenges increasing for many of the most vulnerable Canadian children.

3. The inability of many schools to identify and deal effectively with children who already lag behind their peers when they first enter school.

4. The need to improve teacher preparation in the area of reading development and reading instruction, and to improve the quality of literacy-related instruction in classrooms.

One in four Canadian children who enter Grade 1 is significantly behind his or her peers and poorly prepared to learn. This statistic demonstrates the need to improve support for early learning. The language and literacy environment of the child’s home and early learning and child care (ELCC) settings are strong determinants of early language and literacy skills. Not all children receive the support they need at home in order to be successful in school. To provide an equal opportunity for all children to grow and develop appropriately, Canada needs to invest in universally available, high quality, affordable day-care/early learning centres. Attending high quality ELCC programs can improve children’s language and literacy skills, readiness for school, and early school performance. This is especially true for children from disadvantaged backgrounds for whom quality early childhood development programs can significantly improve longer-term educational and occupational outcomes.

In addition to the need for a comprehensive, universal ELCC system to address the early learning needs of Canadian children who do not receive appropriate support and stimulation within their home, there is an urgent need to improve literacy-related instruction in schools. Currently, many children who are well prepared to learn when they enter school nevertheless fail to acquire strong literacy skills alongside their peers due to the uneven quality of literacy-related instruction. Many jurisdictions have identified the need to improve literacy instruction in schools, but progress has been slow and the education system continues to fail too many children.

It is essential that changes occur in the way that reading and writing are taught in classrooms, as classroom experience is a critically important determinant of how well children learn to read. Improving the way reading and writing are taught in Canada is therefore the single most important consideration for increasing literacy outcomes for Canadian students.

Such change requires improvements in Canada’s system for preparing new teachers and in providing continuing professional education and teacher support programs. At present, many student teachers complete their university teacher preparation programs without learning the basic scientific principles behind the development of reading skill and effective reading instruction. As a result, the substantial body of knowledge on how to teach children to read, how to identify children who have failed to acquire specific reading skills, and how to intervene effectively is not being applied in many Canadian classrooms.

At present, many student teachers complete their university teacher preparation programs without learning the basic scientific principles behind the development of reading skill and effective reading instruction. As a result, the substantial body of knowledge on how to teach children to read, how to identify children who have failed to acquire specific reading skills, and how to intervene effectively is not being applied in many Canadian classrooms.

The report includes four broad recommendations encompassing a range of underlying strategies.

1. Encourage and assist initiatives that facilitate children’s language and literacy development from a very young age.

Rationale:

Language skills provide the foundation for literacy skills, thus the language environment to which children are exposed from an early age is very important. Experience gained within the family home from the time that children are very young has a significant impact on their language development.

While most parents wish for the best outcomes for their children, not all home environments presently support optimal language development; these children begin to fall behind their peers from the very beginning. It is therefore important to provide appropriate guidance and support for the families of all infants and young children and to assist vulnerable children through centre-based, high-quality early learning and care settings that provide the needed language-rich environment.

Because infants and young children are in contact with the health care system from the beginning, it is natural to use this system to provide early guidance and support. Recognizing the importance of literacy for better health and life outcomes, many hospitals, physicians, paediatricians, and home visiting programs by nurses have

initiated such programs. For example, the health-care based initiatives that distribute “books to babies” provide a natural, universal, and effective channel to help parents to value, and understand how they can support the language and literacy development of their young children.

Identifying and intervening at an early age with children who are at risk for poor language, literacy and learning outcomes as a result of sensory or cognitive development factors is essential for these children’s future success. Early identification and remediation of such developmental issues can significantly improve outcomes for children and can be highly cost effective.

Poor literacy development is more likely for children living in poverty, as well as for children in certain at-risk groups. Aboriginal (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) children are especially vulnerable to poor language and literacy outcomes and must receive opportunities for participation in enriched early learning programs. Children in families where neither English nor French is spoken could also be at risk if they are not provided with supportive environments for language and literacy development. It is particularly important for agencies having responsibility for at-risk groups to provide support as a routine component of the immigrant orientation and settlement process.

Many adults have low literacy skills or are otherwise poorly equipped to assist their children to acquire the necessary language and literacy skills. Investing in improving the skills of adults can benefit children by increasing the effectiveness of parents as their child’s first teacher.

The costs of the above initiatives are modest, and the returns on such investment are high.

Actions:

1. Implement initiatives that help parents to understand the importance of their child’s language and literacy development and to engage in activities that support this development.

2. Build this guidance and support system around existing community resources that support early literacy such as hospitals, health clinics, libraries, schools, and early learning centres.

3. Facilitate the development of a system of high-quality, centre-based, enriched early learning and care programs for preschool children.

4. Ensure that pre-service and in-service training programs for early learning specialists provide a strong background on early language and literacy development.

5. Implement universal screening programs to identify important sensory and cognitive challenges at an early age (e.g., vision, hearing, language development, etc.) together with the appropriate intervention programs.

6. Develop targeted, evidence-based initiatives to improve outcomes for children in families where neither English nor French is spoken and for Aboriginal Canadians.

7. Support initiatives that improve the literacy skills of adults.

Recommendation #2:

2. Ensure that appropriate teaching strategies, shown through rigorous, evidence-based research to be effective in developing strong literacy skills, are used in all Canadian classrooms.

Rationale:

Once children enter school, teachers play a very important role in children’s language and literacy development.

Teachers therefore require a deep understanding of how age appropriate literacy skills are acquired, and how these can be taught. They must also understand how to evaluate weaknesses in an individual child’s literacy skills and also know the range of instructional and intervention techniques that can help the child to overcome these weaknesses. It is therefore imperative that both pre-service and in-service teacher training programs provide teachers with evidence-based knowledge on how to measure and to teach fundamental literacy skills to all children.

Teacher and resource teacher education should be based on a three-tier model for teaching children to read. Through this process, all children would receive a standard baseline of core classroom instruction, sufficient for most children to learn to read. Regular assessments would quickly identify the approximately 20% of children for whom this core instruction may have been insufficient, so that supplemental instruction can be provided before they fall far behind their peers. Further assessment and intensive intervention would then be provided for the approximately 5% of children who require this level of service.

Actions:

1. Enhance teacher training programs to ensure that all graduating teachers understand: a) how children learn to read; b) what instructional methods are effective for ensuring that children acquire strong reading skills; c) how to identify a child’s specific literacy weaknesses; and d) what interventions are appropriate to address each weakness.

2. Enhance in-service training programs and within-school support services to develop such understanding and skill development among current teachers.

3. Ensure that each school and school board puts in place an explicit literacy assessment, instruction, support, intervention and monitoring process, implementing the three-tier model.

4. Ensure that all children acquire fundamental literacy skills through an evidence-based instructional program that must include systematic, direct, and explicit instruction, supporting the acquisition of essential alphabetic, code-breaking skills, and the development of strong oral language, vocabulary, grammar, fluency, and reading comprehension skills.

Recommendation #3:

3. Encourage community engagement and support for ongoing literacy development throughout the year.

Rationale:

Communities possess physical and human resources that can be harnessed at a modest cost, to improve children’s language and literacy skills. Currently, some programs organize community volunteers to provide literacy-specific tutoring for children with reading challenges. Other programs use corporate volunteers for more general tutoring and mentoring for vulnerable students and their families. In several Canadian cities, schools are now being used to provide vulnerable, inner-city children with recreation and learning programs during the summer months, when such children are otherwise likely to lose skills and fall behind their more privileged peers. These programs make use of schools that would be vacant during the summer and hire university students as program counsellors. Such community-based programs require very modest investments while having the potential to yield very good returns.

In addition, at the community level, physicians can use their privileged advisory role to promote literacy among their young patients – with potential benefits for both the patients and the health care system in general.

At each visit, physicians can have substantial impact by informing parents of the importance of, and ways to promote, optimal language and literacy development, and by making parents aware of relevant developmental milestones and inquiring about the individual child’s language progress.

Actions:

1. Develop and advance community-based family literacy programs.

2. Encourage programs that engage community volunteers to work with young students within the school.

3. Support community-based programs for students in at-risk communities. Programs that engage local sports teams and businesses can be particularly effective.

4. Develop summer learning programs for at-risk children.

5. Encourage paediatricians and family physicians to work with childcare providers and literacy specialists at the community level to promote literacy locally, as well as within their practices.

Recommendation #4:

4. Improve communication and the sharing of literacy-related knowledge and resources.

Rationale:

Public awareness of the status of literacy skills across the population is low, and there is very limited appreciation of the economic, social and personal impact that low literacy has. There is a special concern that businesses and the federal government are neglecting the economic and social impact of low literacy skills. The current investment in research and evaluation activities to improve literacy outcomes is vanishingly small.

At present, knowledge and experience gained from initiatives to improve literacy undertaken in one part of the country are rarely shared with other Canadians. This leads to needless duplication of effort and inefficient use of resources. Canada requires a comprehensive approach to facilitate networking and the sharing of information across regions and sectors in the early literacy area.

Actions:

1. Communicate the urgency of the need to improve literacy skills.

2. Improve the sharing of knowledge about programs and resources across the country.

3. Support applied research and evaluation initiatives that address gaps in our knowledge of literacy skill development. These include:

i. Improving measurement instruments for a range of skills and populations, including non-English speaking groups.

ii. Developing and evaluating improved interventions and instructional techniques.

iii. Performing systematic evaluations of programs and initiatives.

iv. Facilitating knowledge transfer, exchange, and application, within and across the research, policy and practice sectors.

v. Promoting implementation of science research to enhance our capacity to “scale up” effective instruction techniques and interventions across whole education systems.

It will be valuable to monitor the implementation of the Canadian recommendations over the next few years and ascertain what lessons, if any, the strategies have for early literacy intervention in Australia.

The report was prepared by the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network of which Donald G. Jamieson, Ph.D., is currently CEO and Scientific Director.

A copy of the full report is available online at http://docs.cllrnet.ca/NSEL/finalReport.pdf

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Improving Outcomes for Students with Dyslexia

In a recent report commissioned by the British Government, the need to respond more effectively to students struggling with dyslexia was identified as a priority requiring immediate and substantive attention. The report – Identifying and Teaching Children and Young People with Dyslexia and Literacy Difficulties (Rose, J) – was completed in June, 2009 and the Government have subsequently approved all 19 recommendations arising from the report.

 

At the heart of these recommendations are two important understandings. Firstly, dyslexia exists and is identifiable as a developmental disability of language learning and cognition. Secondly, in order to respond effectively to students with dyslexia we must ensure that all children are provided with high quality early instruction and that evidence-based intervention is offered to every child identified as at risk of literacy failure.

Pressure for the Dyslexia Report came from many sources but was driven by both parents and adult learners desperately seeking numerous changes to the education system. Of most importance was the early identification of dyslexia and an improved response once identified; two factors seen as being of paramount importance in reducing the impact of dyslexia on developing literacy skills. Many adult learners described the frustration and anxiety associated with their education, and the importance of assessment.

‘‘For years as a kid, I just knew that I couldn’t read properly. I didn’t know why I couldn’t read, but it was always like this big problem that was just sitting there at the back of my head, just waiting and it never went away, in fact it only got worse’. (pg.57)

 

…. and ….

‘At long last one of the teachers at my school got someone to come and assess me. They said I had dyslexia; well it was a great relief to actually know that there was a name for what I had… it was important for me to be able to say to myself, well that’s why you couldn’t read and now I have to get on and do something about it’. (pg. 42)

Many parents and teachers expressed concern about the adequacy of school provision, suggesting it was ‘too little, too late’ in terms of assisting students to overcome the impact of dyslexia. The following comment from a parent illustrates this point:

‘I gave up on her school. I was literally banging my head on a brick wall. Everyone knew she couldn’t read to save her life and that’s what was causing all her other problems, especially at home, it was a nightmare.’(pg. 2)

Early in the report it is suggested that “the long running debate about its existence should give way to building professional expertise in identifying dyslexia and developing effective ways to help learners overcome its effects.” (pg. 9) Many of the report’s 19 recommendations are in line with this objective. They are designed to improve teaching, learning and literacy outcomes for children with literacy and dyslexic difficulties and are grouped under five key headings:

  • Strengthening teaching and learning;
  • Assessing children’s progress and identifying children’s difficulties;
  • Further strengthening intervention programmes;
  • Guidance for parents and others; and,
  • Assuring the quality of provision.

Most of the recommendations have policy and practice implications for Australian educators and should be given strong consideration; particularly as dyslexia remains an area that is both poorly understood and inadequately dealt with throughout Australia. The following is a summary of the recommendations made with some changes to nomenclature; designed to suit the Australian educational landscape.

Strengthening teaching and learning

 

Recommendation 1

Education Departments should fund a number of teachers to undertake appropriately accredited specialist training in teaching children with dyslexia, in order to provide substantially improved access to specialist expertise in all schools and across all education districts.

 

Recommendation 2

Education Districts should consider with schools how they might form groups which could share the resource of a specialist dyslexia teacher.

 

Recommendation 3

Education Departments should commission short courses for teachers on selecting and teaching literacy intervention programmes. These courses should:

  • cover the definition and characteristics of dyslexia (see figures 3 and 4);
  • equip participants with the expertise to select, implement, monitor and evaluate literacy interventions;
  • ensure those trained are able to advise other teachers and support staff on delivering high quality interventions;
  • provide links to on-line training materials.  

 

Recommendation 4

Education Departments should develop, or commission the development of, dyslexia-relevant materials in light of this review. The materials should continue to be promoted for in-service and pre-service teachers, and other members of the workforce involved with teaching literacy, such as teaching assistants.

 

Recommendation 5

Education Departments should ask appropriate organisations (e.g. DSF) to review their accreditation criteria for training courses for specialist dyslexia teachers so that courses cover good practice in Wave 1 teaching of reading and writing, and how a child’s literacy would normally develop if s/he is not experiencing difficulties.

 

Recommendation 6

Education Departments should ask Universities and other organisations involved in pre-service teacher training to build on initiatives for strengthening coverage of special educational needs and disability (including dyslexia) in initial teacher training courses and through continuing professional development.

 

 

 

 

Recommendation 7

Education Districts should set out how schools can secure access to sufficient expertise to meet the needs of children with literacy and dyslexic difficulties (see figure 1 for recommended model).

 

 

 

Assessing children’s progress and identifying children’s difficulties

 

Recommendation 8

The first step in identifying that children may have dyslexia is to notice those making poor progress in comparison with their typically developing peers, despite high quality Wave 1 teaching. Therefore, Education Districts and Departments should work with schools to make sure that they have in place good monitoring arrangements to ascertain that Wave 1 teaching is of a high quality, especially in teaching word recognition and language comprehension skills in keeping with the ‘simple view of reading’ (see page 20 for a detailed description of the ‘simple view of reading’).

 

Recommendation 9

In a review of early childhood education, consideration should be given to how language development can be carefully monitored so that where children have emerging difficulties with aspects of language and literacy that may be obstacles to their progress, practitioners can take steps to overcome them and tailor provision more carefully to individual language needs.

 

Recommendation 10

The development of national assessment protocols should be linked to early years screening and assessment, thus assisting with the identification of literacy difficulties; a first step towards identifying dyslexia (see figure 2 for a model on the steps towards diagnosis of dyslexia).

 

Further strengthening intervention programmes

 

Recommendation 11

Education Departments should work with partners to develop the following:

  • Effective Wave 2 provision that is systematic in its approach to phonic work;
  • pre- and post-intervention phonemic awareness assessment that picks up the word level skills children should master (based on a thorough review of published assessment materials);
  • guidance on how class teachers, and the intervention teacher, should share information so that children’s progress through the phonic phases (as in Letters and Sounds) can be tracked, and interventions and in-class support planned as complementary responses.

 

Guidance for parents and others

 

Recommendation 12

Education departments should commission clear guidance for parents and schools on the policy and purpose of interventions. This should include explaining how effective interventions, for all school age groups, are to be made available for children with literacy and dyslexic difficulties, and how children’s progress will be monitored. The content and implementation of this guidance should be independently evaluated.

 

Recommendation 13

The guidance should be placed on an interactive website covering literacy and dyslexic difficulties, on which there should also be:

  • regular updates on successful ways of helping children to overcome literacy and dyslexic difficulties;
  • links to inclusive education materials, and to the short course materials which feature in the third recommendation.
  • A copy of this review and key background papers that contributed to it.
  • A copy of ‘What Works for children with literacy difficulties? (G. Brooks’ 2007) guidance, which should be regularly updated –  

 

Recommendation 14

All schools should:

  • keep parents informed of the plans for, and progress of, children with literacy or dyslexic difficulties;
  • publish the procedures they follow to identify and support children with such difficulties.

 

Recommendation 15

Education Departments should provide appropriate support for students with learning disabilities and should develop and promote guidelines for parents, so they are better placed to understand and question provision being made for their children. This should refer directly to provision for reading difficulties, including dyslexia.

 

Recommendation 16

Education Departments should continue to fund a helpline that provides advice to parents and people working in schools on dyslexia and literacy difficulties.

 

Assuring the quality of provision

 

Recommendation 17

Principals and School Councils should audit school provision to make sure that it complies with ‘The Disability Discrimination Act (1992)’ and the ‘Disability Standards for Education (200?) and use their best endeavours to ensure that the necessary provision is made for any student who has special educational needs. By definition, this will include identifying and making necessary provision for children with dyslexia.

 

Recommendation 18

With the help of Education Departments and School Districts, all primary and secondary schools should evaluate their intervention programmes, and make sure that where the expertise required for these programmes needs to be strengthened, steps are taken to do so.

 

 

Recommendation 19

Education Departments should consider commissioning an independent survey to evaluate the extent to which, and with what impact, primary and secondary schools are using interventions to advance the progress of children and young people experiencing a wide range of literacy difficulties.

In a written Ministerial Statement to the House of Commons all 19 recommendations were officially accepted and endorsed. Ed Balls, Secretary of State, described the report as “excellent” and “a well-crafted distillation of research evidence and the concerns expressed by children with dyslexia and their parents”. The Government intend to work closely with peak bodies in the UK to ensure the recommendations are translated into practice and have committed over £10 million towards improving outcomes for all students with dyslexia.

Australia is the only English-speaking country that does not have clear policy and practice guidelines on dyslexia and the current improvements taking place in the UK, the USA and New Zealand serve to leave Australian children and adults struggling with dyslexia even further behind.

Mandy Nayton

DSF Executive officer

Further Reading:

 

Identifying and Teaching Children and Young People with Dyslexia and Literacy Difficulties, Rose, J. (2009), http://publications.dcsf.gov.uk/eOrderingDownload/00659-2009DOM-EN. pdf

An explanation of the ‘Simple View of Reading’ (see page 20 of this Bulletin)

‘What Works for children with literacy difficulties? (G. Brooks’ 2007)  – http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/search/earlyyears/results/nav:46163

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A ‘Not To Be Missed’ Opportunity for Change January 2010

During 2008 the Hon Bill Shorten, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services, met with representatives from dyslexia interest groups who expressed concern that dyslexia is not recognized as a specific disability under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and that the education and employment systems do not recognize or support people with dyslexia.

Following these meetings the Parliamentary Secretary requested the FaHCSIA convene a roundtable Forum to discuss these issues.

This Dyslexia Stakeholder Forum was held at Parliament House, Canberra on 16 June 2009. The Forum consisted of 24 people, who are scientists in the areas of reading or learning disabilities, technologists, people with dyslexia, clinicians and practitioners, or representatives from DEEWR and FaHCSIA. It was decided that a representative Working Party of 8 Forum members should be formed, charged with the task of writing a report proposing a national agenda for action to assist people with dyslexia. AUSPELD was represented on the Working Party by two members of the executive, Angela Weeks, President and Mandy Nayton, Treasurer.
The Working Party consulted widely and in particular benefited from comments on a draft report that were received from the following authorities (all of whom have expressed very strong support for the recommendations we have made):

• AUSPELD (The Australian Federation of Specific Learning Difficulty Associations)
• LDA (Learning Difficulties Australia)
• ALDA (The Australian Learning Disability Association)
• Speech Pathology Australia
• The DDOLL (Developmental Disorders of Language and Literacy) network, which was established with funding from the Australian Research Council.
• Sir James Rose, author of the Rose Report on Dyslexia commissioned by the UK Government.

I am delighted to share this report with you and invite you to contact the Hon Bill Shorten directly at http://www.billshorten.com.au with your comments. I think this is a ‘not to be missed’ opportunity for the Dyslexia Community to petition for change and have their voices heard. I shall keep you posted through the website of our progress.

Angela Weeks
AUSPELD President

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Resources Available Now!

A great range of literacy resources for all ages are available from AUSPELD.  From introductory information about learning difficulties to powerpoint presentations about dyslexia.  From Magnetic Morpheme kits to Motivational DVDs – all at affordable prices.  Wherever you are in the world these items can be yours with just a small charge for postage. Please visit our resources page to find out more!