Spelling out some problems for Gonski

Ian Keese (ACE 2/12/13) wrote: Under the current Minister, factual evidence is increasingly unimportant – perceptions seem to be all that matters. In an interview for Sky News, Minister Pyne claimed that a recent study rated Australia 27^th among English speaking countries in both literacy and numeracy. This goes against all the evidence from any of the respected studies, and in fact it was just one study into primary school spelling.

Few people know it, but the biggest problem with the Gonski-Coalition plan actually dwarfs all of its possible future achievements and it will render them close to valueless. The Gonski-Coalition plan simply does not address the desperate need for an Australia wide radical reform in basic literacy teaching. The teaching of primary level spelling for example, would be only one of about half a dozen vital issues in such a reform, and here are some details.

With or without the Gonski billions, the Coalition's new administration must deplore the eradication of English spelling skills from primary literacy Australia wide.

Since especially the early 1980s, government literacy curricula throughout Australia have been oriented towards actually eradicating correct spelling from the testing and teaching of basic English at all levels. Impossible though this seems, no other conclusion is possible. Consider only the 3 points below to start with.

• Australian education authorities last formally surveyed the spelling-for-age skills of our school students in 1936 a distance of 11 entire primary school generations.
• 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.
• Our National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy in Australian Schools in 2005 did not even attempt to investigate or comment on the spelling skills of Australia's school students. It had been the first ever such national literacy inquiry in the history of Australian literacy teaching.

Australian authorities simply don't test spelling any more: some proof

Until the 1982 advent of whole language literacy teaching methods in our schools, the basic procedure for giving a simple English spelling test had remained unchanged for centuries. The teacher 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.

By contrast, the modern whole language method for the survey testing of student spelling stands at a point between absurdity and blatant dishonesty. Over the past 3 decades, the record of Australian government efforts to survey primary student spelling skill is highlighted by the following examples from spelling test surveys.

I have not made any mistake in reporting: Yes, in 1996, in the state of Victoria the very same survey test of only 8 (former 'infant school') spelling words was given to children in both years 3 and 5. Even then, the students were not required to write the words from memory: they had only to encircle the correctly spelt word from a set of four alternatives provided. e.g. lookt looked lookd lukt

Let's look now at a more recent example. In May of 2008 the NAPLAN attempts to assess spelling still refused to actually test the students' ability write entire words from memory. Instead, the program again invited each student merely to encircle the correctly spelt word within 10 sets of 4 arbitrarily contrived misspelt words at each year level.

In both cases above, the so called spelling tests were therefore no such thing. They were tests only of accurate read-aloud skill.

There was indeed a time in Australian literacy education, when our education authorities were prepared to honestly report the spelling-for-age levels of the students in Australian schools. Below, I present a spelling test of 50 words from a book of official national spelling tests. The Australian Council for Educational Research produced 11 reprints of this book between the years 1936 to 1969.

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

Each test word had to be written in full and 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 and 13.5 year olds 42.

These details on English spelling alone indicate that a Gonski-Coalition implementation without a prior radical reform to our national primary literacy curricula, will simply never work with the majority and this despite the splash of billions of dollars.