Page 1779 - Week 05 - Thursday, 16 May 2019
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five students, or 15 to 20 per cent of the population, has a language-based learning disability. Dyslexia, defined as a specific learning difference that is neurological in origin, is characterised by a persistent difficulty with reading, word recognition and spelling, and is regarded as the cause of most reading, writing and spelling difficulties.
In turning to the petition presented to the Assembly here today, although it bears only one signature it does not reflect the deeply held Canberra-wide concern about this issue. I will be seeking leave to table an out-of-order petition in similar terms to this one, which has received 588 signatures online through the change.org website. The one tabled here today is a truncated version of the online change.org petition but the essential concerns outlined in both remain the same.
Both petitions highlight the valuable early work that was done by a Legislative Assembly task force. The task force delivered a number of recommendations to the then education minister, Ms J Burch, and were all agreed to, but the reforms were short-lived.
The petition here today is calling on the ACT education system and the ACTÂ government more broadly to recognise that students with difficulties in learning to read are still disadvantaged in ACT schools and that more work needs to be done in early diagnosis, early intervention and appropriate evidence-based literacy instruction for students. The petition also calls on the government to ensure that decodable readers, which are a valuable and often necessary tool and a beneficial resource for teachers, are available in the classroom.
Early diagnosis and intervention are so important in the life of a young person, as is a thorough literacy and numeracy check in year 1 of schooling, together with access for every ACT school to educational psychologists and literacy specialists qualified in evidence-based literacy instruction. I note that the federal coalition has agreed to a phonics check for all year 1 students, and I congratulate and thank them for their commitment to ensuring that our future generation will be given the best opportunity from the beginning of their schooling.
Having said that, teacher training courses in Australia dedicate less than five per cent of their four-year curriculum to teaching reading. More work needs to be done in developing better training units for the dedicated teachers who want to work in this space or who work generally in early education so that they can recognise when a child is struggling with literacy issues. Our teachers need to be better supported so that they, in turn, can better support children who need it.
In closing, both petitions demonstrate the community concern about this issue and the need for action. I also thank Jen Cross for her years of passionate campaigning for dyslexia to be better understood, for dyslexia to be more widely recognised and for the appropriate diagnostic and intervention services to be readily available. It is through the efforts of such committed people that change can occur and young Australians can have the best educational start in life. I commend the petition to the Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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