Tēnā koutou katoa,
Today the Prime Minister and I will be making a significant announcement about the roll-out of structured approaches to literacy in our primary schools.
Over the past few years more and more schools have undertaken a shift in practice away from the whole language approach to structured literacy with great success. On visits around the country, I have learned of your success stories, particularly in regard to lifting achievement and closing the equity gap.
A structured literacy approach teaches in an explicit and systematic way that aligns with the science of how our brains learn best. There is a strong body of evidence and student outcome data that supports this approach which starts with decoding words using the smallest units of sound (phonemes) and building up from there.
This approach is supported by all of the classroom practice that teachers know engages our students and build a joy for reading. Some of my favourite memories are of being read to by my Year 4 teacher at primary school with a chapter a day of Roald Dahl’s The Twits and I expect that this will support and enhance the foundational skills that structured literacy offers our students.
Currently, many schools choose to access training for their staff by paying providers directly through operational grants. This often involves substantial cost and waiting times for preferred providers. A structured approach to literacy also requires the use of appropriate decodable books and resources, again which carries cost for schools.
I am absolutely committed to ensuring that every school has access to the resources that they need to train their teachers and resource their classrooms to teach reading using a structured approach to literacy.
To this end, I am pleased to confirm Budget 2024 includes $54.4 million of additional funding for professional learning and development related to structured approaches to teaching. A further $8 million has been allocated to support schools in purchasing classroom resources, and $4.6m for online supports, administration and evaluation of the programme.
We will focus initially on Year 0-3 teachers in 2024 with an aim to providing training to around 10,000 teachers by the end of the year. In 2025 we will move to the training of Year 4-6 teachers. I am passionate about ensuring school leadership teams are able to be a part of this journey and encourage all principals of schools not yet using structured approaches to literacy to partake in the Year 0-3 training alongside their colleagues.
As well as more support for quality teaching in classrooms, improvements will also be made to accelerative supports and resources, so that there is a coherent approach to what is being taught and how. Practically, this will mean streamlining access to Tier 2 and Tier 3 support for students that require extra help and ensuring that this support builds on classroom learning using the same structured approach to literacy. This will require changes to existing Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support programmes.
Additionally, the new Curriculum Refresh, due to be released later this year, will ensure that a structured approach to literacy, grounded in the science of learning is reflected in the curricula material to ensure we have consistency across the education system, so all ākonga, no matter where they go to school, are taught what they need to know based on a detailed national curriculum that teachers are prepared to deliver. I will have more to share with you about the overall curriculum refresh timeline in the coming weeks to ensure sufficient time for feedback and implementation. For those teaching in bilingual settings, I can confirm that the same support and resource will be provided in Te Reo Māori.
Work is underway with the Teaching Council to ensure trainee teachers have the skills needed to use structured teaching approaches. I have also asked the Ministry to provide advice on appropriate assessment, aromatawai and monitoring options, so we can check that we are moving towards our achievement targets. I hope to provide further information about this, particularly with regard to an introductory phonics check for our younger learners shortly.
Later today we will receive communications from the Ministry with more explicit detail about the implementation of this announcement including how to access training, order resources and support your school staff to make this change.
I look forward to your continued support as we work together to strengthen our workforce and enhance our education system. It is extremely important to me, as I know it is to you, that we set up all children and ākonga for success with their schooling, and their lives after school.
Thank you for being part of this positive change and as always please send through your feedback. I may not be able to respond immediately but I do read them all.
Ngā mihi
Hon Erica Stanford
Minister of Education
How Mairangi Bay School is responding to the Structured Literacy approach announcement:I am pleased to celebrate that the Mairangi Bay School have already started the Structured Literacy journey and are a year into implementing our programme. At Mairangi Bay School, we are currently developing a scope (content) and sequence (a coherent pathway) for our school in literacy from Years 1-6, aligning a shared language of learning. Initially we have focused on
Little Learners Love Literacy for Years 0 and 2, and
The Code for Years 3 to 6. These are resources to support teaching Structured Literacy from Year 1 through to Year 8. Structured Literacy includes explicit and systematic teaching of phonological awareness, the alphabetic principle, syllable types and morphology, and The Code and Little Learners encompass these. Dictation provides students with the opportunity to apply their new and developing knowledge of the alphabetic code at sentence level and is a bridge to independent writing
To find our more, please
CLICK on our school website.
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