13 February 2015 | General Interest
Over 300 school staff – including principals, teachers, and teacher aides – have undertaken training in back-to-basics approaches to reading and writing to benefit disadvantaged students from 34 remote schools in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
The Federal Minister for Education and Training, Christopher Pyne, announced in February that participants involved in the initiative had completed the intensive training.
The Government’s flexible literacy for remote primary schools programme sees education professionals trained in the delivery of Direct Instruction (DI) and Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI), alphabetic teaching approaches, which are designed to assist children who have difficulties reading, or are at risk of developing reading problems in the future.
“Literacy is the cornerstone of all education. You must be able to read and write if you are to succeed at school and at life in 21st century Australia,” Mr Pyne said.
Primary years teachers involved in the programme have been trained to focus on essential reading skills, including phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.
“It’s great to see that teachers have signed up for this important work and I commend them on their dedication to ensuring that remoteness is not a barrier to reading and writing,” Mr Pyne said.
Discussions are currently underway to establish whether or not there are other remote schools that would benefit from the training in the future.
