Larry Williams Drive

If you are a parent or a grandparent worried about whether our schooling will teach your child to read properly – you need to listen to this. Good education announcement from National today. I have been waiting for anyone to announce this for a couple of years now. So I'm pleased someone’s finally done it. If the Nats win the election, they will require all primary schools to teach little ones to read using structured literacy – which is basically going back to phonics.  Now let me explain to you why this is potentially a game changer. For the last 50 years, our schools have not been teaching phonics. They have been teaching what’s called whole language.  And basically what that does is assumes that kids will naturally learn to read just like they learn to talk. If you leave books with pictures lying around for them and if the book has the word apple next to a picture of an apple – that will teach them to read.  It is rubbish. It does not.  It is such a fail that 36 percent of our 14-year-olds failed the NCEA