Australian Basic Literacy Teaching A Destructive National Swindle

AUSTRALIAN BASIC
LITERACY TEACHING
A Destructive National Swindle
CHRIS NUGENT 4th February 2014
Email: literacytesting@bigpond.com
PO Box 4 : Kallista : Vic : 3792
SUBMISSION TO THE
AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW
AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE
SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW
CONTENTS
SECTION
PAGE
1. An introduction to the destruction of basic literacy teaching nationally.
2. Our current national primary English curriculum is professionally incompetent
3. Only 3 simple skills fall within the literacy basics group.
The first basic literacy skill: the alphabetic (or phonic) principle
The second basic literacy skill: read-aloud skill
The third basic literacy skill: English spelling
The disqualification of Australias literacy curriculum writers
4. A brief background to the ideological treachery and corporate dishonesty
5. The dishonesty continues nationally to this date
11
6. The right teaching methods do achieve near 100% success
13
7. 3 Warnings to the ACR: compromises with whole language teaching also fail
13
A fraud misnamed as a National Inquiry into Literacy Teaching

Australias un-remedial national remedial reading programs
The lucrative lies supporting the READING RECOVERY program.
An extraordinary level of statistical cheating in the reporting
8. The eradication of English spelling skills from Australian literacy curricula

Australian curriculum authorities dont test spelling: some clear indications
Spelling test example from whole language era spelling surveys
Comparison with a spelling test from a time gone by
Whole language theory: all slogans, no substance and no spelling either
Six whole language slogans for teachers
9. Basic reading and spelling skills are taught not caught
What about the excuse that written English is too unphonetic?
10. Schools all around Australia abused as experimental guinea piggeries
16
21
24
Experimental designer confusion too, in hearing children read
11. The politics of planning national illiteracy
26
The impregnable alliance: its destructiveness

A concerted effort to pull down standards ?
Cops and robbers and a de facto presidium in the Ministers office
12.
Downloadable programs are the ONLY way to practically assist the nation
30
ACARA: Adamantly of no value to basic literacy teaching in Australia
Minimum basic equipment for teachers and teacher advisers
Minimum basic equipment can be downloaded cost free
Downloadable programs for our parents and teachers are necessary in four areas
Regular broadcasts of national spelling tests and a code of integrity
Some advantages of regular nationally broadcast primary spelling tests.
AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING

A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE
Chris Nugent: February 4th 2014
1. An introduction to the destruction of basic literacy teaching nationally.

In a January 29th email, the office of The Hon Christopher Pyne, Federal Minister for
Education, recommended that I put a submission before the recently established Australian
Curriculum Review (ACR) panel. This writing is my response to that recommendation.
The current government took control of the reins to a massive national crisis in education
when it assumed office only six months ago. It has scarcely had sufficient time to even survey
the crisis that it inherited let alone initiate carefully planned moves to start fixing it. Yet
persistently vocal critics from within the entrenched educational establishment already
abound. For the meantime, some of these critics would do well to back off and spend a little
more time watching.
In justifying these statements I speak exclusively from the standpoint of my narrow area of
expertise. This area can be summarized simply as basic literacy teaching in Australia.
Though narrow in scope, the subject of only basic literacy teaching in Australia can be used,
better than anything, to exemplify the persistent bureaucratic destruction that has permeated
all avenues within Australian education for the last 3 decades.
This is not an exaggeration. Its an axiom: when an entire nation fails in only its basic
literacy teaching, then it consequently fails also in most of the rest of its educational efforts.
And this at all levels and in all its institutions everywhere .
Regardless of copious blather to the contrary, the teaching of basic spelling and reading skills
in Australian schools and workplaces is close enough to the worst in the English speaking
world. This said, I present below a list of the 8 main failures of Australias bureaucratically
impelled primary English curricula to help our teachers to teach basic reading and spelling in
schools. It is impossible to ignore evidence like the following:
1. There is a national literacy crisis in Australia. In April of 2011, Australias
eleven Industry Skills Councils publicly announced that we have up to 8
million workers with serious reading problems in our workforce. In 1996 and
2004 Dr Kemp and Dr Nelson, each in his time the Federal Minister for
Education, announced that 1 in 3 secondary students had serious reading
problems. Only last year, the ABC featured an ABS report to the effect that a
stunning half of all Tasmanian adults were functionally illiterate. And so on: the
crisis has truly enormous dimensions.
2. To make matters worse, Australias current (December 2012) national primary
English curriculum is ludicrous to the point of being a profound embarrassment:
it strategically avoids even mentioning the 3 core literacy basics of alphabetic
(or phonic) skills, spelling skills and read-aloud skills. Proof of this especially
destructive absurdity is in section 2 of this submission.
3. Going from worse to worse still, primary English literacy curricula in all our
states and territories are scarcely any better: in all jurisdictions, and with only
minor differences between states, they simply follow the example and ideology
of the national leaders. And since at least the early 1980s none of the
government sponsored literacy curriculum documents in Australian major
educational jurisdictions has contained any guidelines to direct any teachers at
any level to the systematic testing or teaching of any of these 3 core skills.
4. Now, turning the national crisis into a catastrophe: since the early 1980s,
primary English literacy curricula throughout Australia have been aimed at
actually eradicating spelling from the testing and teaching of basic English at all
levels. Absolutely no other conclusion is possible. The proof of this too, is in
section 8 of this submission.
5. The spelling-for-age level performance of our school students was last
nationally tested all the way back in 1936, a distance of 11 entire primary
school generations. Also, despite official denials, Australias yearly NAPLAN
tests do not conventionally test accurate spelling skill. Proof again is in section 8
of this submission.
6. As an obvious consequence of the meticulous eradication of the 3 vital literacy
basics from our Primary English curricula nationally, Australian government
education systems at all levels between and including our kindergartens and
workplaces, have now not systematically tested or taught the 3 core literacy
basics for some 30 years. Yet in living memory, the back-to-basics mantra
has featured prominently in most of all our Australian Labor and Liberal
pre-election platforms.
7. And the culminating disgrace comes last. In December of 2012 a very public
global survey of basic spelling skill revealed that the scores of Australian
students in year 4 were the lowest of some 27 countries in the English speaking
world.
8. Some 9.5 million students and workers with problems in both spelling and
reading did not accidentally arise out of merely intermittent errors in our
literacy curricula. They had to have arisen out of deliberate and persistent
errors that had to have been systematically maintained over a 30 year period by
our education authorities nationally. And carefully describing this systematic
maintenance is one of the main objectives of this submission.
Planned educational rot that germinates at the roots affects the entire tree for life. The now 30
year old bureaucratically mandated teaching methods that have so clearly sunk Australian
literacy levels to the bottom of the international barrel, have got to be quite explicitly
expunged from all of the highest levels in all our jurisdictions. Clear evidence of its rampant
destructiveness now intrudes into the personal and professional lives of millions of
Australians daily.
.
The ACR has a massive job ahead if it. As I said earlier, I regard myself as being qualified to
comment with some authority only basic literacy teaching in Australia. But it is not
exaggerating my level of expertise to suggest that some of the lessons that have emerged from
my experiences in this area might be generalized to other areas as well.
2. Our current national primary English curriculum is professionally incompetent

In looking at any primary English Curriculum we need to bear in mind that, by definition, a
primary English curriculum should contain the official job description that our teachers of
basic literacy skills have got to follow as a condition of their employment.
In Australia however, when we look closely at any of the primary English curricula that have
been produced by our governments over the past 30 years, we quite invariably make alarming
discoveries. The starkest case in point here is the most recent national primary English
curriculum that was issued by ACARA in the December of 2012. It is indeed embarrassingly
simple for anyone to prove that this basic literacy curriculum for our primary schools is not
better than professionally incompetent.
All you need to do is load the Curriculum into the PDF file converter on your computer.
Then, with the file converters word finding tool, you simply go looking for the number of
times that particular words do or dont appear in the document. The result is called a word
count analysis. The primary school sections of our current national English curriculum
contain a total of 28,416 words. A simple analysis of these words does shock:
The word count data in the boxes should be considered as spread over the 7 year levels that
are in Australian primary schools. Among other things, this data shows that Australias
national curriculum authority is alarmingly bent on refusing to direct our teachers to
systematically test or teach the 3 core literacy basics of English spelling skill, English read
aloud skill and the English alphabetic principle. The numbers in the boxes do say it all. There
is no excuse. No primary English curriculum could be more professionally incompetent.
WORD OR
CONCEPT
No of times
mentioned
Text(s)
Language(s)
Word(s)
Learn(ing)(er)
Read(ing)
Writ(e)(ing) (ten)
Speak (ing) spoken
Context(s)
Meaning
Create (ing)
Listen (ing) (er)
Story (ies)
Literature
Understanding
Digital
Spelling
Strategies
Multimodal (texts)
Language feature(s)
Strands
Film(s)
Predict(ion) (ie guessing)
Phonic(s)
745
244
234
155
148
142
118
111
95
93
87
84
79
64
48
48***
47
46
44
43
29
29
22***
WORD OR
CONCEPT
sounds of letters
prefixes and suffixes
syllables
consonant
vowel
handwriting
alphabet (ic)
phonemes
blending
correct spelling
test (ing) (s)
read/reading aloud
word identification
word recognition
phonic check list
letter shapes
spelling list
dictation
word study
copy
trace
discriminate
perceive/perception
No of times
mentioned
13
6+6
11
11
11
10
9
6
5
3
2
2+5
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
The figures in the 2 boxes leave most people speechless. How is it possible for a national
primary English curriculum to so deliberately avoid even mentioning almost all of the
main features that are involved in the systematic testing and teaching of the 3 core
literacy basics to school children? Study the two boxes carefully and for as long as you
please. The especially sad part is, that you dont need formal qualifications to make the
uncontestably correct judgment that the national curriculum is rubbish, but you do need
formal qualifications to actually write the rubbish for our teachers in the first place.
Bureaucratic or academic thinking of this type just cannot help basic literacy teaching
anywhere with anyone. It is the type of weirdo thinking (developed exclusively in our
expensive teacher training institutions) that is quite capable of assuming that you can build
a brick house without bricks or bake a fruitcake without fruit.
When a fanatical semi religious fervor such as this is in charge of directing the nations
thinking about what is needed for basic literacy teaching in schools, this fervor is called an
ideology. This ideology that has, at last, so patently removed almost all mention of the 3
core literacy basics from Australias 2014 national primary English curriculum, is called
the whole language ideology.
This whole language ideology has dominated the design of all government sponsored
literacy curricula produced throughout Australia since 1982. It is precisely this ideology
that has functionally destroyed quality in basic literacy teaching throughout the country.
3. Only 3 simple skills fall within the literacy basics group

There are only 3 basic literacy skills that we need to look at when we are called on by
politicians and others to rally around a back to the literacy basics political platform. In
summary, these skills are alphabetic (or phonic) skills, read-aloud skills and English
spelling.
If a student or worker has a deficit in only one of these 3 skills then he or she will remain
disabled in basic literacy competence until that deficit is fixed. There is simply no other way
around this teaching problem. Insightful but very simple diagnostic testing and competent
reteaching, that is aimed at eliminating the specific skills deficit, is the only answer for
students and workers like this.
Thats why Education Department officials everywhere need to urgently promote the testing
and teaching of these 3 skills with explicit attention to all necessary detail. But will they
ever? Permit me to help both the ACR and yourself to examine a few bleak and longstanding
barriers.
The first basic literacy skill: The alphabetic (or phonic) principle
School curricula around the English speaking world often use the word phonics to refer to
that part of basic literacy teaching that helps readers to cope with the sounding-out of English
words. This sounding-out process is alternatively referred to as the alphabetic principle or
phonic skill, and no English word has ever been written without it.
This principle, regardless of all the ideological arguments, will remain forever as the very
first skill of the lot in basic literacy teaching. 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. Regardless 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.
More to the point: despite the clear and crucial relevance of the alphabetic principle to the
teaching of basic literacy skills, no Australian education authority has ever once surveyed the
performance for age levels 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 obvious question about the 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
they regard their curriculum writers as being validly qualified to direct our teachers on how
and when to teach it and to whom?
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 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 couple of 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 basic literacy skills about which our current Australian literacy
education authorities can know nothing at all of any consequence. 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
Correct spelling is at least 50% of every basic literacy task. All words do have to be written
accurately before we can require students to read them. Yet, as mentioned earlier, the most
recent Australia wide test of the spelling for age skills of Australian school children occurred
all the way back in 1936.
There is no excuse for this longstanding nationwide failure in the survey testing of spelling
skill: via a radio or television program, government education authorities could, at least
theoretically, test all school students in Australia in a matter of only 20 minutes. This would
probably make it the most inexpensive and thorough national literacy survey of the lot. Then
why hasnt this been done, you ask? All too likely, the testing of English spelling skills in
this way would arm Australias parents and teachers with too much inflammatory but
relevant data.
Notwithstanding, when there have been no new national school based standards set for
English spelling skill in a period of 77 years, how can any modern Australian school stake a
claim to excellence or even normality in its spelling skill?
The disqualification of Australias literacy curriculum writers
Lets quickly summarize this section. The literacy basics that most politicians in living
memory have promised to push our schools to get back to, comprise a total of only 3 basic
skills . These 3 skills have been deliberately de-emphasised to points of extinction for over 30
years by all Australian government education authorities. During the course of over a
century, the first 2 of these skills have not even once been systematically surveyed by any
school system in Australia, and the third skill, spelling, was last nationally survey tested 77
years ago.
So when it comes to the essential testing, teaching and curriculum programming for the
teaching of the 3 vital literacy basics in Australian schools, Australias English curriculum
writers in all the high places are much worse off than merely out of date. Even in the
February of 2014, they remain deliberately ignorant of the 3 most vital skills that are
critically relevant to the success of the very literacy curricula that they disseminate among
Australian teachers of literacy.
How did Australian primary English curriculum writers manage to so completely lose sight
of the literacy basics?
4. A brief background to the ideological treachery and corporate dishonesty.

A teaching ideology that meticulously eradicates the 3 core literacy basics from a nations
curricula for basic literacy teaching is treacherous indeed. But this is now the lasting legacy
of the whole language literacy teaching ideology in Australia. Without a carefully disciplined
foundation in expressly these 3 missing basics, no modern educational superstructure can
hope to be successful.
The ACR would be well advised to consider mandating a national plan to ensure that these 3
basics are returned in full to the regular testing and teaching agendas of all of our the main
Australian educational jurisdictions. It will also be important to let the body of our Australian
teachers know exactly why a revolution such as this, is probably the only practical way to go.
In part, this is also what I am trying to do with this writing.
Historically, the decision by Australian education authorities to mandate the whole language
ideology for our primary English curricula occurred, in all Australian states and territories,
around 1982. This was some 4 years after its unprecedented failure in the massive $2 billion
Follow Through study in the US.
I recall the horror clearly. Simple horse sense for simple basic literacy teaching screamed at
the incomprehensible things that our school curriculum authorities started to delete
permanently from Australian primary English curricula. It was in the literacy teaching
insanity of this period that even the three key words test, phonics and spelling were
systematically expunged from primary English literacy curricula in all Australian
jurisdictions. Even in the 1980s, the consequence of this for teaching effectiveness around the
nation was a foregone conclusion:
The minute that you eradicate the word test from literacy curriculum documents, that
is the very minute in which you might just as well eradicate the word teach as well
and this happened throughout Australia. No testing will forever mean that
no simple teaching of a properly informed type will happen.
The very minute too, that you eradicate the word phonics from these same documents,
that is the minute in which you also eradicate the English alphabetic principle from
teaching school children to accurately write and read English words.and for
some 21 years, this too happened all around Australia.
Finally: the minute that your literacy curricula present to teachers only theories of
reading skill but never also of accurate writing or spelling skill, that is the very minute
in which your literacy curriculum authorities have abdicated at least 50% of their
obligation to teach children to write, spell and read accurately. And in the year 2014
this is still happening all around the country. See section 8 of this submission
Since around 1982 all three of these destructive errors of omission have remained officially
embedded as the implacable whole language policy for government sponsored literacy
curricula and projects throughout Australia. You need only to do simple word counts, like the
one in section 2 of this submission, to prove my point.
Its not as though there wasnt a massive amount of evidence around in the 1980s to tell our
curriculum writers that they were pushing our education systems toward inevitable literacy
catastrophes. Evidence in abundance was all around for all those who chose not to espouse
the vogue appeals of the new teaching fashion.
In fact, an abundantly financed corporate dishonesty supported the initial 1982 mandate of
the whole language revolution into all Australian schools. And a corresponding dishonesty,
still backed by all Australian governments, is responsible for keeping it there after 30 years of
disastrous results. Here are some details.
The whole language method was first subjected to comparative effectiveness trials alongside
7 other main methods for literacy teaching in the gigantic US $2 billion * Follow Through
study of the mid to late 1970s. For the duration of that study, the whole language method
was acronymed as the TEEM* model. It had originated out of the Arizona University in
Tucson and had been lavishly funded by the school book industry.
The now infamous Professor Kenneth Goodman had been one of its main patrons and he
subsequently went on to be hailed internationally as the founding father of the method.
Exactly why Goodman was actually applauded for being the founder of a failed teaching
10
method is still an enigma. A member of his staff, and not Goodman himself, had actually
designed it in the first place. And the TEEM method had indeed failed ignominiously in the
experiment.
(*Todays monetary values: *Tucson Early Education Model)
The vital point is this: when put to the critical test alongside 7 other main methods for
teaching children to write and read, the TEEM method had been beaten by a margin of up to
12 times the degree necessary for statistical significance. This margin of experimental defeat
for a teaching method was, and still is, unprecedented in studies of this type: it roughly
equates to the Melbourne Cup winner beating the field by half a lap. But it was the corporate
dishonesty of the school book industry and their political lobbyists that subsequently
succeeded in launching this singularly dismal experimental failure to the giddy heights of a
lucrative multi billion dollar global revolution.
It is important to point out that the original resounding failure for the whole language literacy
teaching method was reported in the literature of 1978-81 and indeed many times later. This
failure however, did not daunt the consciences of the supporters of the method: they had just
too much face as well as heaps of money to lose. With backing from a multi-billion dollar
school book industry, that was clearly able to lobby government administrations in different
parts of the world, the failed TEEM method was simply given a variety of name changes
and re-launched to make enormous profits around the English speaking world.
By the early to mid 1980s, education authorities in at least the UK, the US, South Africa,
New Zealand and Australia had all mandated the failed TEEM method, but under a variety
of new names, for the teaching of literacy skills to children in schools. By the late 1980s, the
name whole language had emerged from among the other names as the preferred one
globally.
5. The dishonesty continues nationally to this date.

For the last 30 years, the supporters of the whole language method have replied to their
critics with the lying boast that their new approach to literacy teaching is eclectic,
balanced, integrated, natural developmental and even humane in its choices of
materials and teaching methods to teach with. During this time, these liars have also
persistently ignored the volumes of relevant empirical evidence on the very superior values
of systematically testing and teaching the English alphabetic principle and spelling with
children at school.
From roughly 1982 to this day, warning signs from all over the world about the continuing
and very serious failures of whole language teaching have been largely or even completely
ignored within the ivory towers of Australian literacy curriculum writers in all states and
territories.
By 1991, Martin Turner of the London based Dyslexia Institute was reporting huge
downturns in the reading standards of UK school children. He had isolated the whole
language literacy teaching method as the cause. It took a full 6 years however, for
the UK authorities to acknowledge that Turners observations had been right.
11
In 1997-98, UK schools introduced its new statutory literacy curriculum for its
primary schools. This was called the National Literacy Strategy in which, for a
period of 7 years, teachers were mainly required to add extra teaching in phonics
skills to the then predominantly whole language literacy teaching programs and
materials in UK schools. The UK has a population about 3 times the size of
Australias.
By March of 2005, the results of the 7 years of national UK trials of this mix of
methods were presented to the UK House of Commons. The House subsequently
ruled that the mix of methods produced distinctly inferior results to strictly phonic
methods. Later still in 2005, the UK national literacy curriculum authorities ruled in
line with these findings.
By 1995, this time in the in the US, Californian education authorities reported that
some 12 years after Californias official mandate of whole language teaching for its
primary schools, that states literacy performance rating had descended from the top
to the bottom of the US literacy ranking ladder. California has a population
approximately 1.5 times the size of Australias.
This literacy tragedy was big enough to be reported globally and was featured at
least twice on national Australian TV in 1996. It should have caused all
school education systems around the world to immediately ban whole language
teaching as an educational malpractice.
But 20 years after the first reports on the Californian whole language disaster,
Australian curriculum authorities are still choosing not to abandon it. These
authorities, even in 2014, apparently need to be forcefully reminded that a recipe for
a sponge cake in both the UK and US will never produce a fruitcake in Australia.
Warning signs from within Australia too, approaching and surpassing the billion dollar
mark, are still ignored to this date. One example suffices:
In October of 2003, the Victorian Auditor General reported to the states

parliament that some $663 million dollars had been spent, over a period of only 7
years, on corrective whole language literacy teaching programs for little if any
benefit at all.
If over half a billion of whole language dollars (over a mere 7 year period) were
officially of little benefit to Australian school students in the one state of Victoria,
then a survey of similar audits in other Australian states should be mandatory.
From overseas and within Australia there is now an abundance of evidence to
show that the Australia wide wastage on whole language literacy teaching
programs since 1982 runs into billions.
By now, most school education systems in the English speaking world have learned the hard
and very expensive way. The 1982-2014 literacy revolution called the whole language
method will remain forever as the foremost born-to-fail literacy teaching method that it was
in the very beginning when it was first put on trial in the mid to late 1970s. Education
systems in Australia and New Zealand are the principal exceptions.
12
6. The right teaching methods do achieve near 100% success.

There is no excuse for the current low literacy levels among Australian school students and
workers. Australian literacy curriculum authorities have all along needed to listen to the
irrefutable empirical evidence from other parts of the world and then they have needed to do
exactly what this evidence actually told them to do.
Since 1978 especially, this evidence has effectively said that there is no excuse for any
modern school system to fail in teaching nearly 100% of all school students to read and spell
accurately for age.
The more recent 2004-05 UK government findings on best practice in literacy

teaching served only to reinforce what was already proven well beyond challenge in
1978 and before: Only with the right type of code emphasis teaching programs, can
almost 100% of all children be taught easily to both read and spell at levels
appropriate for their ages or better.
Indeed, by the end of their UK elementary school education, properly taught students
in Clackmannanshire could be expected to perform over 3 years ahead for age in their
basic read-aloud skill and 1.8 years ahead for age in their spelling. And this regardless
of their wealth, gender and ethnicity too .
Why have Australian literacy curriculum bureaucrats in all our states and territories seemingly
not wanted this truly exceptional level of success in the literacy basics for all Australian
school children? None seem so blind as those Australian literacy curriculum writers who are
deliberately deaf as well.
7. Three warnings to the ACR: compromises with whole language teaching also fail
The ACR and the Federal Minister for Education need to take special note of a number of
events that occurred at and since the time of the 2005 National Inquiry into Literacy
Teaching in Australian Schools (the NITL). If they do not, they will run the risk of making a
similar mistake to the one made by Dr Brendan Nelson in that year. Nelsons chief mistake
was to trust an ideologically prejudiced bureaucracy that clearly had a vested interest in
protecting the professional reputations of its own members and close associates. See section
11 of this submission for more details here. So lets now bring a couple of verifiable
historical events into the spotlight.
The first nationwide attempt to actually compromise with whole language literacy
teaching curricula occurred in the UK in the years 1998 to 2005. This compromise
was called the National Literacy Strategy in which, for a period of 7 years, teachers
nationally were mainly required to add extra teaching in phonic skills to the then
predominantly whole language curricula within UK schools.
13
As reported in brief earlier, by March of 2005 the results of the national trialing of
this mix of methods were presented to the UK House of Commons. The House
subsequently ruled that this mix of methods produced distinctly inferior results to
strictly phonic methods. By the end of March, the House had ruled in line with the
national finding. Strict phonic programs now became the in thing for the UK because
even the compromises with whole language literacy curricula had been discredited
throughout the nation.
In light of the very expensive events that followed Australias 2005 NITL, this 9 year old
national UK failure in an ideological compromise with whole language teaching methods,
should scream a warning to both the Federal Minister for Education and the ACR. But will
it? The Australian network of whole language lobbyists does have an established record for
treacherous disregard of both inconvenient evidence and Ministerial authority. Consider the
following please:
At least 3 major Australian literacy teaching enterprises with dire multi million and even
billion dollar consequences stand out as prime examples of 21st century folly in continuing to
fund the whole language literacy teaching disaster throughout Australia.
A. A fraud misnamed as a National Inquiry into Literacy Teaching

As mentioned earlier, two Australian Federal Ministers for Education (Dr David Kemp in
1996 and Dr Brendan Nelson in 2004) declared in the media that 1 in 3 of our Australian
secondary students had serious literacy problems.
But in 2004 especially, Dr Nelson declared that his federal education department was no
longer going to allow bureaucratic ideologues to hijack the educational bus and that he
was determined to get to the bottom of Australias national literacy problem. It was this
public declaration that led to the formation of Australias first ever National Inquiry into the
Teaching of Literacy in Australian Schools (the NITL). But nothing much has changed
nationally since that time if only because the national inquiry was sabotaged by Nelsons own
bureaucracy.
Hard to believe? Consider some facts. As a matter of normal ministerial procedure, Dr
Nelson called upon his own in-house literacy curriculum bureaucrats to advise him on which
other in-house literacy experts were best equipped to conduct a national inquiry. And
naturally, all the friends of those curriculum writing bureaucrats who are at risk of being
subjected to formal scrutiny, will always choose like minded friends, from the pool of
potential examiners, in order to forestall any ripples that might rock boats.
What followed was, by any standards, a disgracefully compromised inquiry. In the December
of 2005, Australias first ever national inquiry into the quality of literacy teaching in
Australian classrooms committed at least 4 unforgivable omissions not one of which was
accidental. The first ever inquiry into Australian student literacy nationally:
did not examine and report on the spelling abilities of Australian school students.
did not critically examine and report on the mandatory government literacy curricula
that all Australian school teachers are required to follow.
14
did not examine or report on the characteristics of any tests used by our Australian
education authorities to gauge literacy levels in schools.
did not include that vitally relevant information from the national UK literacy testing
that was reported to the UK House of Commons in the March of 2005.
From the foregoing 4 omissions alone it is safe to conclude that the NITL was
bureaucratically sabotaged to (1) report only on carefully selected features of Australias
school based literacy crisis and (2) strategically avoid all patent truths or realities that would
have been far too hard for a huge pool of bureaucrats to admit to.
Dr Nelsons public commitment, as Federal Minister for Education, to get to the bottom of
Australias serious school based literacy problems had been neatly decapitated by his own
bureaucracy. In the fanfare that followed the December 2005 publication of the NITL report,
much was made of its few apparently positive features but nothing at all of its nationally
crippling omissions such as the foregoing.
At that time, my formal protests to the federal Minister for Education, even via government
senate members, met with the invariant perfunctory quashing: and this foreshadows an
ominous premonition. The labyrinth of bureaucratic side-trackers that gave the two finger
salute to the federal Minister for Education in 2005 will most likely strive to do the very same
thing with the findings of the ACR. Minister Pyne is going to need the full support of the
federal cabinet if hes going to do what he will have to do in order to do anything thats
permanently good.
B. Australias un-remedial national remedial reading programs

As a direct consequence of the foregoing very wrong recommendations by the 2005 NITL,
the designers of Australias subsequent national remedial reading programs (the RAV and
AES programs of 2006 to 2008) were also wrong. The designers of both of these multi
million dollar programs claimed that they had been constructed in line with the
recommendations of the NITL and that they were therefore designed in line with current best
practice for the teaching of reading. The best practice claims were lies.
In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. According to the vital UK evidence
that was omitted by the 2005 NITL, the best practice as claimed did not endorse the practice
of merely adding some additional phonics instruction to predominantly whole language
instructional reading methods and materials.
C. The lucrative lies supporting the READING RECOVERY program

The Reading Recovery program is also an adamant whole language program for the
corrective tutoring of reading skills, but not spelling, with children after the preparatory year
of the primary school. It is the most infamous, expensive, labour intensive and ineffective
remedial reading program in the history of basic literacy teaching.
It is also big business for the global school book industry. At a fair estimate, the Reading
Recovery program in Australia alone has been funded to the tune of at least $2 billion since
the mid 80s. Reading Recovery was not considered necessary in the years before our
15
education authorities, against all the evidence, mandated the whole language method for use
in Australian preparatory classes. US research in 2001 put the cost of the Reading Recovery
program anywhere between $4,625 and $9,200 per individual student. Wow!
An extraordinary level of statistical cheating in reporting.
With some 3,900 published childrens book titles in the recommended manual for the
Reading Recovery program, there has all along been a need for a multi-billion dollar industry
to protect a sizable investment. Only in-house reports funded by the business advocates of the
program, ever seem to describe the program in especially favourable terms. Independent US
research on these in-house reports shows that approximately 40% to 50% of the data on
children eligible for the Reading Recovery program are actually omitted from final analyses.
This is just another case of blatantly dishonest whole language fanatics avoiding the
publication of seriously bad truth. The fact is: the very high percentage of initially eligible
Reading Recovery students that are not included in the final data pool are effectively the
programs failed students. These failed students are simply never reported on by those
program advocates who go on to falsely claim up to a 75% to 85% success rate for Reading
Recovery students.
In light of these verifiable facts, the true success rate of the Reading Recovery program can
be more appropriately estimated as follows. If the success rate for Reading Recovery were to
be taken as all the eligible students whose performance caught up with the national average
then the true success rate for the Reading Recovery program would plummet to a figure
between 6.5% and 14.7%. (Pollock 1994)
Emeritus Professor Diane McGuiness also wrote more recently: Properly controlled research
on Reading Recovery shows repeatedly that Reading Recovery tutoring has little or no effect,
or if an effect is found, the gains quickly evaporate. For example, in 1999 the San Diego
authorities, after 7 years of a controlled $20 million trial, reported (1) that the program did
not produce any significant long term benefits for its students and (2) it was actually inferior
in some respects to no special reading program at all.
Only the whole language Reading Recovery program seems able to report truly dramatic
experimental flops as success experiences: only a deliberately blind bureaucracy can refuse to
acknowledge that the emperor is rudely naked. The effectiveness of the exorbitantly priced
Reading Recovery program has never been validated in any study that has used conventional
methods of statistical analysis. Quite to the contrary! At best, the Reading Recovery program
is an overused educational swindle, and at worst it is an educational malpractice.
8. The eradication of English spelling skills from Australian Literacy Curricula

Since basic literacy education began all the way back in the times of our ancient Middle
Eastern patriarchs, correct spelling has been at least 50% of every literacy task that has
involved reading or writing. Quality in basic literacy performance does not exist without
quality in spelling performance.
Until it actually happened in Australia, it would have been difficult to imagine that a draft
primary English curriculum for the teachers of an entire nation should mention correct
16
English spelling only twice. But when this same (2010) document included 10 more errors
that were almost equally as educationally destructive, then the impulse to laugh out loud
disintegrated: the clever countrys boast, via ACARA, of a world class (sic) quality basic
literacy curriculum for its schools had been irretrievably exposed.
The revised final version of this curriculum in December of 2012 showed only occasional
differences. Those, who at some future date, implement the ACR recommendations in our
schools will need to restore the systematic testing as well as teaching of English spelling to
all levels of primary and secondary school education. And here are the reasons:
Since the early 1980s, government literacy curricula throughout Australia have been
oriented towards systematically eradicating correct spelling from the testing and
teaching of basic English at all levels. Impossible though this seems, absolutely no other
conclusion is possible. Consider the 10 points below to start with.
In 1993-95 the official federally promoted newsletter of advice to some 10,000

Australian teachers of adult English literacy was called Literacy Update
A simple count of core words in the articles of 22 editions of this journal showed
that although the word literacy was written over 2,700 times, the word spelling
was mentioned only 3 times and the expressions test and alphabet only twice.
The expressions dictation, read aloud skill and word recognition each scored 0.
This example of the new literacy curriculum trend toward the total eradication of
spelling skills from basic English education in Australia was just the beginning.
Since 1994 all new government sponsored English curricula for primary schools in
Australia have been based directly on the original or updated versions of the never
ever validated Outcomes Based Education method for curriculum design. None of
these new curricula have ever contained any recommended year level spelling lists,
any sample spelling tests, or even any lists of English spelling rules for Australian
literacy teachers in the primary school.
Our Australian National Primary School Literacy Survey in 1996 was the first
such survey in a period of 21 years. It did not contain a spelling test.
Since 1996 none of our annual State of Victoria primary school surveys of basic
English skills (e.g. the LAP and AIM tests) have included an age level spelling test.
Our 1998 Australian National Literacy Benchmarks have an example of a

year 2 level spelling test in the section for year 5. Its still hard to believe, but the
inescapable proof is on page 35 of the printed version of these Benchmarks.
In 1982, Victorias recommended year level spelling list for primary schools listed
over 1,300 words that were organized in 16 levels for children in years 3 to 6.
In 1994 however, our only recommended spelling list was only 100 words long.
As described earlier in this submission, our 2005 National Inquiry into the
Teaching of Literacy in Australian Schools did not even attempt to investigate or
comment on the spelling skills of Australias school students. It had been the first
ever such national inquiry in the history of Australian literacy education.
17
As pointed out in section 2 of this submission the 2012 Australian National

Primary English Curriculum for our primary schools mentions correct spelling
only 3 times in 28,416 words. It fails also to provide minimum sample spelling lists
for each year of primary English education.
In all except 1 of the above mentioned documents, the word dictation could not be
found at all. It wasnt mentioned even accidentally. It seems to have been
obliterated even from the thinking of Australias literacy curriculum writers.
Yet even as far back as 1996, industry sources had reported that a staggering 70%
of Australian youth entering the workforce failed industry standards in spelling.
And finally of course there is the December 2012 report that the spelling scores of
Australian school children in year 4 were the worst of 27 countries in the English
speaking world.
Australian curriculum authorities dont test spelling: some clear indications

Until the advent of whole language methods in our schools, the basic procedure for giving a
simple English spelling test had remained unchanged for centuries. The teacher first presented
each test word in a simple instruction (such as John went to buy his lollies: write buy) and
then the student had to write down the test word correctly: and this completely from memory.
This testing procedure was time honored for countless generations. For accuracy and
efficiency it is still unsurpassable. However, with two relatively minor exceptions since the
1970s, I know of no record of any large scale government survey that has tested Australian
student spelling skill in this rigorous and still appropriate way.
By contrast, the modern whole language method for the survey testing of student spelling
skill stands at a point between ludicrous faade and blatant dishonesty.
Spelling test examples from whole language era spelling surveys
Over the past 3 decades, the record of Australian government efforts to survey student
spelling levels is highlighted by the following examples.
1996 test words YEAR 3
Victorian LAP survey
crashed
looked
liked
wanted
couldnt
threw
missed
tied

Victorian LAP survey
crashed
looked
liked
wanted
couldnt
threw
missed
tied

Federal Literacy Benchmarks
(p 35)
crashed
looked
liked
wanted
---------------------------------
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Three points need to be made about these whole language spelling test items
I have not made any mistake in the reporting: Yes, in 1996, in the state of Victoria the
very same spelling survey words were given to children in both years 3 and 5
With one exception, all these spelling test words for years 3 and 5 can be found in the
old fashioned spelling lists for years 1 and 2.
Even then, the Victorian students in 1996 were not required to write the words in full
from memory. In each case they had only to encircle the correctly spelt word from a set
of 4 alternatives provided. e.g. lookt looked
lookd
lukt.
It would be impossible to design a more damning example of officially promoted dumb

down in the testing of English spelling. The annual spelling test for the school children
throughout the state of Victoria in 1996 simply wasnt. It didnt test.
Lets look now at a more recent example. In May of 2008 the NAPLAN attempts to
assess student spelling levels werent quite as ludicrous as the above. But they still
refused to actually test the students ability write entire words from memory. Instead, the
program invited each student to again merely to pick the correctly spelt word within 10
sets of 4 arbitrarily contrived misspelt words at each year level. This so called spelling test
was therefore a test only of accurate read-aloud skill and not of spelling! Additional cause
for concern at that time were examples such as:
former year 2 words running and catch for year 5

former year 2 and 3 words bottle and finished for year 7 and
former year 5 words finally, receiving, advances and impact for year 9.
Comparison with a spelling test from a time gone by
There was indeed a time in Australian literacy education, when our state education
authorities were actually prepared to honestly report the spelling-for-age levels of the
students in Australian schools. Strategically locked away in government sponsored archives
are records of a set of old fashioned spelling tests from 1936 to 1969.
Surviving tattered copies of these heritage era documents occasionally crop up in rare
places. From a photocopy of one of these copies I present below evidence of a distant past
official honesty in the reporting of the age-level spelling skills of Australian school children.
My 36 page copy of the evidence is entitled ACER SPELLING TESTS. It was originally
produced by The Australian Council for Educational Research in 1936 and went through
13 officially sanctioned reprints until the last one in 1969. For these 33 years it was a
guide for the age-level spelling skills of 8 to 14 year old school students in all Australian
states. There were 6 comparable tests in the book and each test contained 50 words. The test
words from only one of them follow.
gold bring high took part north burn climb press sometimes return music
speaks size obtain coffee chimney weigh wear towel choose usual allowed
ought quarrel tomato canoe described receive concern label opposite sincerely
occupy familiar quantity opportunity extraordinary annual receipt consequence
committee orchestra persistence recommended stationery indispensable unanimous
privilege irresistible
19
Each test word had to be written in full from memory. In those days 8.5 year old students
were expected to score around 13 right 9.5 year olds 21 right 10.5 year olds 28 right
11.5 year olds 34 12.5 year olds 39 13.5 year olds 42.
Many thousands of copies of this Australian educational landmark heritage book had to have
been printed. Perhaps pointedly however, on a recent trip to the head offices of the ACER
in Melbourne, I was informed by the librarian that she was unable to actually find an
inspection copy: not even in the ACER archives. Interestingly too, at the time of my visit I
was not permitted to photocopy any records of former ACER tests. Was the ACER trying to
hide evidence?
Whole language theory: all slogans, no substance and no spelling either.
All whole language literacy teaching agendas ignore the obligation to consistently test or teach
accurate spelling at any level. An explanation of a type for this insane pedagogical thinking is
available only if we choose to examine the widely promoted slogans or tenets that underpin the
whole language theory. Because whole language teaching is so prevalent in our schools, its
theoretical underpinning must be challenged before the ACR then subsequently by the ACR.
The box below contains a selection of only six of the many sloganized tenets that have been
used, since around 1982, to promote whole language teaching methods and materials in
Australia. These tenets are still current.
Six whole language slogans for teachers
Reading is mainly a non visual cognitive act.
Learning to read begins at birth.
The only reason for reading is to construct meaning.
Readers use a range of strategies to construct meaning.
Without meaning the associations between letters and sounds cannot be known.
Reading requires an understanding that no text is neutral in its opinions.
A measure of simple commonsense is all that is needed to spot the extremism in tenets like
these. For a start, the 1981 assertion by Sloan and Latham that reading is mainly a non
visual cognitive act is clearly from a realm of theoretical fantasy for non humans.
The remaining five tenets were taken only 2 years ago from the website for Australias
national Literacy Educators Coalition. The tenets were taken from the what-we-believe
page on that organizations website. By self acclaim, the 400 plus membership list for the
coalition reads like a list of whos who within Australias ardently committed whole
language collegiate. The collegiate members are still serious about the validity of these five
tenets and that is why we are obliged to give them serious attention. Well take each tenet in
order and answer it:
20
Learning to read begins at birth. Breathing, crying, sucking, peeing and

pooing begin at birth. Actually, the childs reading begins much later when
you as mum or dad or teacher start to show the child about books, words, letters
and sounds.
The only reason for reading is to construct meaning. This is blatantly false:
whenever you are reading, the meaning in every case has already been
constructed for you by the writer. And the first reason for reading is to
actually reconstruct the meaning that the writer originally intended. To do this,
you simply must be able to accurately read every word that the writer had to
write and this one letter at a time, all the way. Guesswork is not permitted.
Readers use a range of strategies to construct meaning. Actually, on most
occasions, readers initially use their so called strategies not so much to
construct meaning but more to visually and cognitively organize words,
letters and groups of letters into recognizable segments. And this well before
the intended meaning of the writer is able to be reconstructed.
Without meaning the associations between letters and sounds cannot be
known. It is sad indeed that the literacy theorists who wrote and edited this
fantasy must have actually believed their own deceptions. Please read these
words: taeao : limpio : andare : These words have been taken from
Samoan, Spanish, Italian and Ancient Greek respectively. I can read them all
perfectly but I had to actually know all the associations between the letters
and sounds well before I was able to read them and find out about their
meanings.
Reading requires an understanding that no text is neutral in its opinions.
Even I, at the age of 74, can clearly recall being able to read to my teacher, my
mum and my older brother well before I had acquired an understanding that
no text is neutral in its opinions.
These publicly espoused beliefs of Australias Literacy Educators Coalition on the subject
of reading theory but not also of spelling theory, speak very poorly indeed of the university
training of the groups membership.
The above few snippets from the Educators inventory of mantras have served their purpose.
It was all along going to be quite impossible for any literacy curriculum, based on trite whole
language slogans like these, to teach the 3 literacy basics to our school children. The whole
language attitude to the teaching of spelling in our schools universally presumes that
eventual accuracy in a students writing will just so naturally occur as an incidental byproduct of eventual accuracy in his reading. How utterly stupid.
9.
Basic reading and spelling skills are taught not caught
Basic literacy amounts to nothing more than the ability to accurately read words out loud and
then spell them correctly. This is the good old fashioned foundation literacy that has existed
since at least the time of Moses and his contemporaries in the Hebrew, Arabic, Ancient Greek
and Roman civilisations of some 3,200 years ago. This is also the type of literacy which all
Australian parents do want for their children but which all Australian governments have
failed to test systematically for at least 77 years.
21
To quite efficiently teach this type of basic literacy, you really only need 2 things: the will to
do it, and the very simple and even very primitive materials to do it with. Moses and his
contemporaries did prove this some 3,200 years ago. Todays world has access to basic
literacy only because these ancient cultures succeeded in doing, with the most primitive of
resources, what all our modern Australian education systems have been unable to do with
their massive amounts of money and modern technology. The ancients had it right. Weve got
it wrong.
With very simple materials, most people who can already read and spell can actually test and
teach the literacy basics too. There is absolutely nothing that is difficult about systematically
testing basic phonic skills or basic read-aloud skills or spelling: Nor is there anything hard at
all about teaching these skills when you use the properly designed phonic materials to teach
them with. And when any student has control over these 3 basic skills alone he effectively
does have full control over his literacy basics. Who on earth would not want all students to
have a full control of this type?
No official and systematic testing of the 3 literacy basics will forever ensure that Australian
schools, colleges and workplaces too will never be equipped to systematically teach them.
This is not a gratuitous biblical style prophesy. The testing of the 3 literacy basics is a reality
that stretches back in a number of cultures for at least three millennia. An excerpt from one of
my recent papers explains.
About 3,200 years ago Moses and his contemporaries with the Hebrew, Ancient
Greek, Arabic, and Roman alphabets all got it right when it came to the
teaching of the literacy basics. And they all got it right too, with the most
primitive of resources. Literacy exists today only because they got it right.
In particular, when it comes to the learning of basic reading and spelling skills in
todays schools nothing at all has been changeable since the reported parting of
the Red Sea. When it comes to basic reading for example, todays children have
all still got to visually organise groups of letters and words and then hook them
up to meaning in much the same manner that the students of Moses did.
And when it comes to basic writing too, all students, even in the year 2014, still
have to perceptually recall and record the very precise sequences of letters in
exactly the same precise way that Mohammed, Socrates and Virgil had to with
Arabic, Ancient Greek and Latin respectively.
Since the time of these ancient patriarchs, written accuracy from generation to
generation has been ensured only by the consistent testing of students for errors
and the persistent correcting of these in every essential detail . In precisely this
manner, basic literacy and its alphabets have managed to survive to this present
day.
Most modern school education systems overseas have stopped playing games with whole
language literacy teaching methods and with the consequent literacy welfare of students and
workers. In the better systems, their primary English curricula especially have returned to the
carefully pre-planned testing and teaching of phonics or the alphabetic principle for the
duration of primary education.
22
What about the excuse that written English is too unphonetic?

Just how important is mastery of the alphabetic or phonic principle? Let me give you some
idea. I know for example, the phonics of Italian and can read every word that exists in that
language but I often need a dictionary to find out about word meanings. I also know the
phonics of Spanish, Latin, Samoan and Ancient Greek but I still need dictionaries to look up
meanings. There is never any stressful uncertainty about how I might pronounce new words
in any of these languages. I never need to guess, simply because I know my phonics.
In all of these languages then, the mastery of the alphabetic principle alone enables me to
actually know the pronunciations of all new words without error. In this sense, a thorough
knowledge of only the mere phonics within each language enables me to actually hear all
of its new words accurately (whether Ive previously heard them spoken or not) but with my
eyes only. However, many opponents of carefully preplanned phonic teaching programs quite
erroneously insist that written English too unphonetic to be tested and taught systematically.
To my recollection, arguments about the phonetic nature of the English written system have
been an intermittent topic in the literature since the writing on spelling reform by John Hart in
the 16th century. At one extreme of the unphonetic English argument, Noam Chomsky in
1982 argued that written English was near optimal just as it is and did not need to be
changed at all. At the other extreme in 1955, Rudolf Flesch argued that written English
contained 181 phonic rules that needed to be taught to children in schools.
Both the curses and the blessings within written English lie in the observation to the effect
that whilst written English is definitely not phonetic, it definitely is predictable. This means
that it does follow a large number of quite reliable and predictable rule patterns for
pronunciation. Literally every competent reader or speller has learned these predictable rule
patterns either as a set of responses to direct teaching or as an incidentally assimilated
byproduct of his reading experiences.
All basic perceptual and recall processes of a consistent type in the reading of written English
require a mastery of these predictable rule patterns or they simply cannot exist as reliable
processes. Regardless of any preferred ideological persuasion, it is the responsibility of
literally every literacy teacher to at least test systematically in order to ensure that literally
every student knows these rules.
All students who dont know the rules must be taught them, and teachers must have to hand a
supply of appropriately designed materials to teach them with. Every student who doesnt
know the regular and predictable rules that do occur throughout written English, fails
decisively at least in his spelling but usually also in his reading.
If basic literacy competence is our aim there is no option to simply knowing what the main
alphabetic rules are. There are simply no exceptions here, and all our education systems must
organize immediately for the cost free downloading of the appropriately designed materials.
More about this in section 12 of this submission .
The lesson to be learned here is so clear: the sooner that any primary school student masters
the pronunciation rules of his English alphabetic system, the sooner he is totally free to
read anything at all that he wants to . . . . and then begin to ask intelligent questions as to
meanings, implications and more.
23
Basic reading and writing with all of the worlds alphabetic languages involves mastery of
the alphabetic principle as a matter of the very first priority. In the simplest possible terms,
this is the process of matching speech sound values to the letters and letter combinations in
words.
When reading, this principle uses a set of sophisticated but basic perceptual processes . But
when writing, the principle uses even more complex processes of recall that necessitate that
the intricate perceptions (which previously operated whilst reading) were no less than precise,
and this every letter of the way . I cover this issue quite fully on my website.
10. Schools all around Australia abused as experimental guinea-piggeries

In section 2 of this submission I presented clear evidence to show that Australias 2014
primary English curriculum was at the highest level of professional incompetence. This
modern curriculum actually represents an updated example of an outcomes based education
(OBE) curriculum. Outcomes based education curricula first emerged 20 years ago out of
function free evolutionary blather that was initially borrowed from the fields of commerce
before it was heedlessly thrust without trialling into education.
Australias collegiate of curriculum experts for all school subjects first introduced the
speculative concept of OBE frameworks to a meeting of all Australian ministers for
education in 1993. Despite the exclusively speculative nature of this concept, by the end of
1994, variations of it had been mandated as the new type of curricula for almost all school
subjects and in all Australian states and territories.
At that time, considerable pressure by the timing of federal government funding in the
1993/94 budget was also added in order to ensure that the mandates were bulldozed into
position with maximum haste throughout all main Australian school jurisdictions.. even
though there was no shred of hard experimental evidence from trials anywhere in the world to
support it. Australia wide, very public teacher indignation was merely quashed.
Worse still, since that time our Australian schools, their principals, teachers and children have
all been kept blithely unaware that they have functioned as educational guineapigs in a still
ongoing nation-wide experiment that has never had either an official time table or an
evaluation system. Effectively then, since that time, Australian schools have largely
functioned as curriculum guinea-piggeries for an Australian bureaucratic elite.
You only need to scrutinize one OBE framework for primary English teaching to find out
how obviously impractical the rest of them are for the teaching of basic reading and spelling
in any classroom. As illustrated quite fully in section 2 of this submission, always absent
from OBE advice to literacy teachers are very practical words and expressions such as test
retest test scores diagnostic test dictation syllable
prefix
suffix alphabet
alphabetic principle consonant
vowel
wrong
grammar
blend
phonics
clause phrase decode perceive expectations for age and more.
24
New words and new expressions from the newspeak jargon of newer versions of the 1994
OBE experiment still spread confusion throughout Australia, without telling teachers about
the specific content that needs to be taught to each separate year group in the primary school.
Examples of these useless new word replacements for the useful old words are: linguistic
structures
linguistic features
interact
interpret
band
strand
visual text
multimodal .
In 2007 Kevin Donnelly encapsulated this shift in language communication perfectly with the
one word that he called edubabble. Edubabble functions to radically break down
communication among all participants in the basic education process. In the long run, it
creates only mischievous confusion and often leads Australian parents into home education or
the non government school systems. As Donnelly pointed out at that time, in the previous 12
years, enrolments in government schools had risen by some 2% but in non government
schools by 22%.
Experimental designer confusion too, in hearing children read

In many schools compensatory armies of parent volunteers have become essential to the
success of whole language literacy teaching agendas. Such armies were not considered
essential in the educational eras that preceded the whole language literacy teaching
frameworks that, in the early 1980s, replaced the then old fashioned English literacy
curricula.
The experimental hearing-children-read sessions by volunteer parents invariably involve
children being required to guess a large number of words long before they have been tutored
in the necessary basic skills to systematically work or sound them out. Constant exposure of
young school children to intellectual uncertainty in merely guessing words does create a
school based breeding ground for increases in the development of early childhood stress
disorders. It should not surprise that many of these disorders are on the increase: constant
guesswork does equate to constant stresswork.
Finally, we are told that the hearing-children-read sessions encourage children to adopt a so
called repertoire of different so called prediction strategies in order to help them to be more
accurate in their guesswork. What is not realized widely enough is that the approaches to
word recognition within this repertoire do not complement each other at all.
The 25 years of salutary research by Byron and Jean Harrison show that the approaches in
this repertoire actually compete with each other and in the process of so doing create more
confusion rather than less. In summary, the well intentioned but still experimental hearingchildren-read sessions often boil down to pseudo benign early childhood interrogation
sessions.
The blunt truth from all over the world about whole language literacy teaching methods and
materials could not be more clear. They have consistently accompanied the highest school
based literacy failure rates in the global history of basic English literacy teaching. Australian
education authorities however, continue to resist change.
25
11.
The politics of planning national illiteracy
The facts and the figures reported in this submission have been presented honestly and
clearly: competent basic literacy teaching throughout Australia is the central victim in a truly
destructive and massive national swindle. The origins of this swindle have been clear. They
have been bureaucratically initiated, bureaucratically manipulated and bureaucratically
maintained against every atom of basic teaching sense for over 30 years.
Since the early 1980s, the systematic testing and teaching of basic literacy skills in Australian
classrooms has been ruled from the top and ruined at the roots by a nation wide alliance of
ideologically compatible organizations. For most of this time, this alliance has comprised a
significant number of professional groups that were (and still are) all government owned,
government controlled or government sponsored to greater or lesser degrees.
Some of these groups have local offices for central organization in each Australian state or
territory. Most too, liaise with the school book industry and with the curriculum advisory
authorities of local state government and non government school jurisdictions. Whenever
issues of literacy curriculum have desperately needed change (as has been the case
throughout Australia for 3 decades) this group has functioned as an impregnable alliance of
ideologues. Over the last three decades the alliance has included the following organizations.
Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority

Curriculum Corporation (now morphed into ACARA)
Australian Council for Educational Research
Australian Council of Deans of Education
Australian Education Union
Australian Curriculum Studies Association
Australian Literacy Educators Association
Literacy Educators Coalition
Australian Council for Adult Literacy
Primary English Teachers Association
Australian Association for the Teaching of English
Australian Council of TESOL Associations
ACARA
CC
ACER
ACDE
AEU
ACSA
ALEA
LEC
ACAL
PETA
AATE
ACTA
The impregnable alliance: its destructiveness

Like many of my generation, over the years I have observed callous injustices that have been
imposed on schools by the above alliance of literacy curriculum high priests. I have often
screamed internally at its hedonistic promotion of teaching ideologies and methods that could
never ever work or that had already badly failed elsewhere in the world. Since around 1982
this impregnable alliance of ideologues has:
rejected the traditions of centuries of successful testing and teaching methods

in literacy education and hid them from any new teachers that Australia has
trained over the past three decades.
26
abandoned the heritage of scholarship in the basic literacy skills, especially in

English spelling
forced virtually all schools in Australia to adopt born-to-fail curriculum

policies such as whole language and outcomes based education in all states
without pre-trials, without timetables, without testing schedules and without
impartially consulting first with our schools, teachers and the broader
educational community.
removed entirely from Australian schools, systematic testing and teaching for
age level performance in: read-aloud skills, spelling, dictation, grammar,
punctuation and even the English alphabetic principle.
purged the words wrong and test from most literacy curriculum documents but
not the words right, correct, evaluation and assessment.
ignored the truly vast volumes of disciplined research evidence against their
decisions for at least 4 entire primary school generations of Australian school
children.
remained unrepentant when their flawed social agendas were revealed again
and again by the research to be destructive of both the literacy levels as well
as the levels of personal self esteem of our school children and workplace
employees.
Such phenomenal destruction to the very roots of Australias basic literacy teaching could
never have occurred without strong and consistent support from teacher unions and office
worker unions alike. Without the support of the foregoing professional organizations, this
clearly planned destruction could not have been disseminated nationally by the two main
planning bodies, the national Curriculum Corporation (now replaced by ACARA) and the
Australian Council for Educational Research.
Finally, the Australian Council of Deans of Education especially, is implicated in the crime
of having trained nearly 3 decades of new literacy teachers that have been destined, precisely
by their new training, to fail more school students than ever before.
A concerted effort to pull down standards ?
If this sounds too much like another conspiracy theory lets just face a very simple political
fact right here and now: in your knowledge, which Australian political party in history has
ever once promised before an election to:
remove the word test from all main English literacy curriculum documents in
the country? And this for both school students and workplace employees.
for a period of over 20 years, remove too, virtually all mention of the English
alphabetic principle, more commonly known as phonics, from these same
documents for teaching school children to spell and read?
remove age level English spelling skills from all literacy testing agendas for
both students and workers nationally ?
27
For the last 30 years there has been nothing that anyone could do to block the arrival of the
next step in the step-by-step dumb down of the spelling and reading skills of our students at
all levels. The alliance of government sponsored ideologues that we have just described, was
always in position to manipulate the knowledge, value judgments and indeed ideologies of
the elected Ministers for Education at the top.
Only a concerted effort by a significant number of ideologically aligned groups could have so
successfully achieved literacy destruction like this throughout the nation. So lets now join up
the dots and make a few simple observations that illustrate both the powerlessness and the
misguided trust that Australian Ministers for Education have had in their educational
bureaucracies whether at federal, state or territorial levels: These are those observations:
When it comes to making urgently needed changes to the teaching of spelling

and reading in our schools, all Australian Ministers for Education have been
powerless to do any good for decades.
For example: Both the 1982 Australia wide mandates for already discredited
whole language methods as well as the 1993-94 mandates for un-trialled
outcomes based education guidelines were both foregone conclusions even
well before representatives of the impregnable alliance presented their
finished products for the mere formality of Ministerial signatures.
Consider also: When in 2004, Dr Brendan Nelson, the then federal Minister for
Education, commissioned the first ever national inquiry into the teaching of
literacy in Australian schools, this inquiry did not even try to investigate the
spelling of our school children. And spelling will forever comprise 50% of
literally every literacy task, both at school and at work, despite the apparent
disapproval of Australias ruling impregnable alliance.
I simply cannot
believe that Dr Nelson knew beforehand that his inquiry into literacy teaching
nationwide would start by so blatantly eradicating at least half of the
comprehensive scope that was so very badly needed.
With a similar degree of destructiveness too, this type of misguided ministerial

trust was again bureaucratically betrayed as recently as December of 2010: the
formal ministerial ratification of Australias brand new national primary
English curriculum served only to perpetuate Australias huge literacy crisis.
I have no doubt that Australias Ministers for Education at all levels still see
schools as simply schools, but the evidence that I have presented in this
submission is quite clear. The ruling ideological alliance that seems to have
dictated to these Ministers for Education, has actually treated our schools much
more like experimental guinea-piggeries for 30 years.
Its a clear reality: the ruling alliance of educational ideologues could never
even once have forewarned our Ministers for Education about the full array of
cons that were to accompany the pros.
28
Cops and robbers and a de facto presidium in the Ministers office

Youll never catch the thief while ever you inadvertently employ him to investigate the theft.
Donnelly expresses a similar sentiment more humorously: you dont get anywhere at all if
you put Dracula in charge of the blood bank. The implacable politics of literacy education in
Australia shuts all doors to anyone or anything that does not support its ideology.
When Dr Nelson in 2004 called for an inquiry into the teaching of literacy nationally, he
could have had little understanding of the panic that must have slugged the ruling ideological
alliance. This alliance had known all along that any very simple and honest inquiry into the
testing and teaching of basic literacy skills in Australian schools or workplaces would stir up
more hornets than a hurricane: the facts that I have presented in the earlier sections of this
submission have not been exaggerated.
Nelsons fundamental error, like the error of all Ministers for Education who preceded him,
was to trust a bureaucracy that was either a member of the ruling ideological alliance or was
alternatively ruled by the networking protocols of this alliance. At the time of the Literacy
Inquiry in 2005, Nelsons de facto presidium of ministerial officers had already been
comfortably settled in long before he had assumed office. It was this de facto presidium that
must have made the decision to manipulate the design of the National Inquiry so that it did
somewhat less than half the necessary honest job. For obvious reasons, a truly honest inquiry
would have gone close to collapsing a parliamentary roof.
Now, when a full Ministerial inquiry is called for but only half an inquiry is planned, there is
a self protective need for a canny de facto to be quite selective about picking the team of
investigators. Hence the need for Nelsons de facto presidium to actually select the thief in
order to solve the problem of the theft. This is why the following organizations were so
heavily represented on the very small National Literacy Inquiry committee in 2005:
The Curriculum Corporation
The Australian Council for Educational Research
The Australian Council of Deans of Education
The Australian Literacy Federation
Once the above members of the ideological or impregnable alliance had been selected as the
majority part of the National Committee of Inquiry, the outcome of the inquiry was largely a
foregone conclusion. And the rest of the alliance could breathe a sigh of relief. The reason? It
had been these very same organizations and their associates in the alliance who, some years
earlier, had actually spearheaded both the design and national dissemination of Australias
problem literacy curricula in the first place.
Astute organization, huh?
29
12. Downloadable programs provide the ONLY way to practically assist a nation
Whether for the sake of money or ideology or both, the ruling bureaucratic alliance for basic
literacy teaching in Australia is ruled by the insurmountable problems that are associated with
the outcomes based education and whole language ideologies. It continues even today to be
dominated by a tyranny for the new and esoteric but disdain toward the reliable and
traditional.
The alliance for example, promotes a modern but largely vacuous array of literacy
education concepts such as cultural literacy, critical literacy, computer literacy, visual
literacy, syncretic literacy, multi literacies (sic) and multiple literacies too. But this same
alliance has been diametrically opposed for decades to the systematic testing and teaching of
the good old fashioned literacy with its traditional phonics, spelling and read-aloud skills.
And its these 3 old fashioned skills alone that our schools and their students and parents
need above all else for their literate survival with personal self esteem into the future . . . and
for English scholarship as well.
A most serious threat to almost all school subjects
The irrational revocation of all basic traditional teaching wisdom within our literacy curricula
has indeed been a sustained phenomenon since the early 1980s. And there has been no
independent government sponsored vetting system in place to temper the destructive
fanaticism that has been so apparent.
Our Ministers for Education, and these alone, are the only ones who have been given the
elected authority and can ethically say thus-far-no-further to an ideologically extremist
public service establishment that has deliberately continued for so long with destructive
errors. It is this command that must be given by all of Australias Ministers for Education to
those bureaucracies who have very largely betrayed their trust since the early 1980s: truly a
matter for bi-partisan parliamentary front benches everywhere.
ACARA: adamantly of no value to basic literacy teaching in Australia
Australias national curriculum authority has been operating for about 4 years. It was
originally called the National Curriculum Board but is now called the Australian Curriculum
Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). In its first 12 months of operation the
authority published 2 documents on English teaching totalling around 10,000 words.
Even in these early documents, a simple word count of the key words revealed the beginning
of ACARAs currently disastrous national literacy curriculum. In this early documentation
phonics and the alphabet were mentioned a total of only 4 times, spelling was mentioned 5
times, testing was actually mentioned 11 times but the expressions word recognition or read
aloud skills both scored 0.
Over a period of 2 years, I wrote frequently with expressly clear analyses to warn the
Minister and ACARA about inevitable problems. I was reluctantly granted a brief meeting
with two officials on one occasion, but nobody wanted to sit and rationally discuss the very
real problems with me. And as we saw, from my analysis of the December 2012 version of
30
the national primary English curriculum, ACARA went on to exhibit only an embarrassing
level of incompetence nationally. How on earth did our national literacy education experts
manage to become so collectively deaf?
An analysis of the membership of ACARAs carefully selected English advisory panel will
shed some light on how this highly educated but impractically qualified group produced such
a blithely misinformed convolution and called it an English curriculum. A check on the 26
members of the advisory panel for ACARAs English curriculum division, reveals a heavy
preference in favour of persons who are also most likely to be members of the impenetrable
ideological alliance that I described in section 11 of this submission.
For its first two years, ACARA was also headed by the globally distinguished Dr Peter Hill
who had had a long standing reputation in Australia and internationally for his strong support
of both outcome based education curricula and whole language literacy teaching programs.
Coincidence or design ? All things considered, ACARA does now have the indelible image
of a very carefully selected ideologically united cloister: utterly useless for any simple basic
teaching projects that do not adhere to the central tenets of their globally discredited theories.
You be the judge: without a radical change in what is now clearly the current and destructive
ideology of ACARA, Australian schools and workplaces will not ever see the new type of
simple basic literacy teaching programs that they do so clearly need: not ever.
Minimum basic equipment for teachers and teacher advisers

Australias bureaucratic systems for basic literacy teaching have got to get real. And I mean
really and truly real. Regardless of the number and levels of the university qualified
personnel that ACARA can muster, it is simply not qualified to practically equip Australian
teachers with the abilities that they need, to both test and teach accurate spelling and accurate
reading skills to Australian students and workers.
Mere university training never equips its graduates with practical expertise in simple basic
literacy testing and teaching. No-one at all can advise constructively about fixing the spelling
and reading problems of a countrys school systems until after they have had both long and
very practical experience with, and have to hand at least the following:
A selection of traditional and totally systematic phonic tutoring programs.

A selection of traditional year level spelling lists.
A selection of traditional age level achievement and diagnostic tests.
A selection of traditional content literacy curricula and programs that actually tell
teachers what to teach, and this in a finely graded way, for each year if not even
semester, of primary English education.
Most minimum basic equipment can be downloaded cost free

To get real in basic literacy teaching youve got to get very practical. If I have learned
anything at all from a career of advising teachers and parents on fixing literacy problems, it
must be this. Your advice on basic literacy teaching will not be followed up on if you do not
put simple tutoring materials into the hands of the persons who are doing the tutoring.
31
If you dont have the simple practical teaching materials to back up your talk with then your
talk has been wasted. This lesson applies just as much to fixing the literacy problems of an
entire country as it does to fixing the problem of your next door neighbor or your next door
neighbors child.
Downloadable teaching programs provide the only way to practically assist a nation
The Abbott administration must seriously investigate the idea of cost free downloadable
tutoring programs that are simple and viable both for teachers in the classroom and parents at
home. Most of Australias estimated 9.5 million students and workers with basic literacy
problems will end up being helped mainly by those relatives, friends, lovers and volunteers
who have access to cost free or near cost free materials.
A clientele of 9.5 million students and workers with literacy problems will most certainly
require on deck every literate hand from every literate age group throughout the country. And
any tutoring materials that are not free, or almost completely free, will simply not be cheap
enough .
If a mechanic without simple mechanical tools cannot fix your car, then a parent, friend or
teacher cannot help the spelling and reading skills of a normal stream student or fix the
problems of a literacy impaired student without simple teaching tools.
Most of the necessary such teaching tools can be downloaded fully. Other necessary tools
that require minimal hard copy can be made available at universally low or impulse buyer
prices, even for those surviving on social security benefits. Only in this way will it be
possible to viably extend simple and well tutored help to all those Australian students and
workers who need it.
Downloadable programs for Australian parents and teachers are necessary in 4 areas
1. Downloadable traditional and standardised tests.
One of the main outcomes of 30 years of exclusively whole language literacy teaching in our
schools, is that none of our main education systems have routinely used standardized or agelevel tests of basic read-aloud skill, basic spelling skill, basic phonic skill and reading
comprehension.
I cannot forewarn more bluntly: without this specific type of very simple systematic testing,
no-one at all can even start to systematically teach spelling and reading to literacy impaired
students and workers. This type of test is essential with every student if we want to be simple
and efficient about discovering just where we need to begin re-teaching them in basic literacy
skills.
A comprehensive selection of now rather old tests of this type is available on my not-forprofit website (www.literacytesting.com) A careful rummage through the test archives of
most Australian school systems would certainly uncover a few more tests that are comparable
32
to these in their usefulness. And such a rummage should be done immediately. We should
even expand our search efforts into the test archives of successful overseas education systems
as well. There is no doubt that unsurpassable and copyright free testing wisdom in basic
spelling and reading skills, still lurks in departmental archives everywhere. We only have to
go looking for it.
2. Downloadable content literacy curricula
A content literacy curriculum is merely a literacy curriculum that actually tells teachers what
to try and teach to students at each year level of compulsory school education. An effective
content literacy curriculum at primary level (more or less like the statutory ones used in
England since at least 1998) will tell teachers what to teach in phonics, spelling, grammar,
and more, in a semester by semester manner for each year of primary school education.
Current Australian provisions for primary English curricula are ludicrous indeed. No
Australian teacher, faced with a government primary school class, is effectively instructed
by a content literacy curriculum as to what exactly it is that she should to try to teach to the
children in that year. In this sense, despite the $40 billion spent annually on Australian
education, there exists no literacy teacher at all who is actually instructed by an explicit
government sponsored job description.
A valid question arises: how many of our state and territorial literacy teachers would adopt a
content literacy curriculum that was written in Canberra? A second question is: does the
leadership in Canberra possess anyone at all with the type of very practical qualifications, in
the teaching of phonics and spelling, that are necessary to design such a curriculum?
Both questions are legitimate: even the briefing papers that the office of the federal Minister
for Education originally handed to the national Literacy Inquiry Committee of 2005, made
no clear feature of the words phonics, spelling or test. Yet literacy does not even exist without
at least phonics and spelling, and relevant testing is quite impossible unless you set out test
relevantly.
Fortunately, the concept of downloadable programs can just bypass most of these problems,
and, into the bargain, get all necessary and practical information about the testing and
teaching of phonics, spelling and reading through to parents at home, teachers at school and
supervisors in the workplace.
3. Downloadable code emphasis or traditional phonic programs
The summary facts about systematically pre-programmed phonic teaching systems are that by
the end of elementary school education, children are over 3 years ahead for age in read-aloud
skill and 1 year 8 months ahead for age in spelling : and this regardless of sex, wealth and
ethnic differences too.
The UK House of Commons in 2005 also noted that pre- programmed and systematic phonic
programs produced near a 100% success rate, even in schools that were situated in areas
deemed unlikely to achieve near to normal success. Cost free downloadable programs of a
systematic and finely graded type, would indeed go a long way toward enabling this type of
instruction to start happening in most homes, schools and workplaces throughout Australia:
and in a relatively short time too.
33
4. Regular broadcasts of national spelling tests and a code of integrity

Quality in English writing is just not possible without quality in English spelling too. The
2005 report of Australias first ever National Inquiry Into Literacy (the NITL) did stipulate
unequivocally that phonics in Australian schools must be taught explicitly, systematically,
early and well. But the Inquiry was just not able to say the same thing for student spelling
skill because (as already reported in section 7 of this submission) it chose at the outset to not
even investigate the spelling skills of Australian school students as part of its charter. No case
for officially premeditated blindness in education could be clearer.
The Abbott government must consider immediately restoring the regular and systematic
testing and teaching of spelling to all levels of basic literacy instruction in our schools and
workplaces. In the long run, quality literacy performance throughout Australia will depend at
least 50% of the way on this single restoration alone.
The radio or TV broadcasting of a yearly spelling test (with age referenced scores) out of
Canberra seems like a good way to enable the entire country to realise that Australia really is
determined to face its massive literacy crisis.
Even if nothing else happened, this type of testing would amount to the most thorough and
perfectly simple way of forcing Australias reluctant literacy education bureaucracy into a
systematically monitored code of integrity. Details below:
Some advantages of regular nationally broadcast primary spelling tests.
An old fashioned pencil and paper spelling test is the quickest, easiest, cheapest,
most accurate and informative literacy test of the lot to design and administer to any
group.
There is no ambiguity in marking a spelling test: only fully correct answers are
marked correct, and literally any competent speller is fully qualified do the marking.
At least theoretically speaking, with a broadcast spelling test, it is possible to test

the entire population of Australia in a matter of only 20 minutes. No other type of
literacy test comes anywhere near to this level of efficiency and cost efficiency.
Only 40 simple test words at a time would be needed for each year level of the
primary school. Appropriately researched year by year spelling lists for Australian
primary schools are on my website.
Teachers, parents and the Australian public would be presented with often
embarrassing age level facts about accurate writing, delivered both into homes as
well as schools for the first time ever.
If taken up, this project would be a unique innovation for English

literacy education globally. Education systems at federal, state and territorial levels
would eventually be forced to bring their basic literacy curricula into line with
the unambiguous and age referenced spelling scores that the Ministries for
Education deliver to homes and schools.
34
Virtually all students who can spell well for age have no problems with the other
areas of basic literacy learning. Most of those that cant spell well for age usually
need only more good teaching on the 3 core skills.
A simple spelling test is the most efficient screening test for literacy levels
with any new group of students. Other types of literacy tests can then be given
to the underachievers in spelling
Such a national spelling project could effectively lead to the first ever nation wide
diagnosis in the teaching of the 3 core literacy skills.
Test scores could be linked directly to the levels within downloadable tutoring
programs. Relevant home tutoring could begin just about anywhere where there
happens to be a PC.
Most importantly, current literacy education bureaucrats in all states and territories
would be unable to continue with their 30 year old facade of competence.
Australia does have a literacy crisis that will be alleviated only if its fundamental
cause is widely recognized in the first place, and then tackled with radical, simple and
cheap procedures such as this.
There are no other viable ways to realistically begin fixing the crisis that weve got.
The numbers are far too big.
FINAL NOTE ABOUT COST FREE DOWNLOADABLE PROGRAMS

In January of this year I submitted an example of a fully articulated
downloadable program to all of the 9 Ministers for Education in Australia. The
title of the submission was
COST FREE PHONETICALLY REGULAR ENGLISH TEXTS FOR STUDENTS
I provided 62 pages of clear demonstration that such a thing was not

impossible.
I am waiting for the replies. I have 5 more cost free downloadable
programs on offer as well.
Chris Nugent
February 4th 2014
35

Australian Basic Literacy Teaching A Destructive National Swindle

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Australian Basic Literacy Teaching A Destructive National Swindle

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AUSTRALIAN BASIC

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

1. An introduction to the destruction of basic literacy teaching nationally.

2. Our current national primary English curriculum is professionally incompetent

3. Only 3 simple skills fall within the literacy basics group.

5. The dishonesty continues nationally to this date

6. The right teaching methods do achieve near 100% success

A fraud misnamed as a National Inquiry into Literacy Teaching

8. The eradication of English spelling skills from Australian literacy curricula

10. Schools all around Australia abused as experimental guinea piggeries

Experimental designer confusion too, in hearing children read

11. The politics of planning national illiteracy

The impregnable alliance: its destructiveness

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING

1. An introduction to the destruction of basic literacy teaching nationally.

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

2. Our current national primary English curriculum is professionally incompetent

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

3. Only 3 simple skills fall within the literacy basics group

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

4. A brief background to the ideological treachery and corporate dishonesty.

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

5. The dishonesty continues nationally to this date.

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

In October of 2003, the Victorian Auditor General reported to the states

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

6. The right teaching methods do achieve near 100% success.

The more recent 2004-05 UK government findings on best practice in literacy

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

A. A fraud misnamed as a National Inquiry into Literacy Teaching

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

B. Australias un-remedial national remedial reading programs

C. The lucrative lies supporting the READING RECOVERY program

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

8. The eradication of English spelling skills from Australian Literacy Curricula

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

In 1993-95 the official federally promoted newsletter of advice to some 10,000

Our 1998 Australian National Literacy Benchmarks have an example of a

SUBMISSION TO THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW

AUSTRALIAN BASIC LITERACY TEACHING : A DESTRUCTIVE NATIONAL SWINDLE

As pointed out in section 2 of this submission the 2012 Australian National

Australian curriculum authorities dont test spelling: some clear indications

1996 test words YEAR 5