Lift Learning

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Yesterday was a day of celebration after Victoria's Education Minister, Ben Carroll, announced that Victorian primary schools would be mandated to used structured synthetic phonics to teach reading in conjunction with explicit instruction in oral language development, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabularly, and comprehension. Today, the joy and relief of that announcement has been usurped by frustration once more, as the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union firmly positioned itself in opposition to yesterday's announcement.

The AEUVic denounced Ben Carroll's announcement as a show his "lack of respect for the teaching profession, who must be at the centre of any decisions around teaching and learning". The AEU insists that the announcement ignores the "deep pedagogical expertise [developed] throughout their careers, based on a detailed knowledge of the context in which they are teaching" and demands that "the capacity of the teaching profession to successfully meet the learning needs of students must be recognised, respected, and supported by the Education Minister". What isn't addressed in the AEU's response to the Education Minister's "breathtaking disregard" for our profession is why they seem to think the 20-30% failure rate is acceptable in education. Would we be satisfied if 20-30% of our buildings and bridges collapsed within the first 15 years because we didn't insist our engineers followed the evidence for best practice in their fields? Would we be happy enough if only 70% of a surgeon's operations were successful? No, it would not be acceptable and professionals with those kinds of statistics would be out of a job. Teaching is dealing with peoples lives and livelihoods. Every child has the right to learn to read, spell, and write. Not 70-80% of children. EVERY child.

The Education Minister's mandate reflects decades of educational, psychological, and cognitive research about how human's learn to read and write. A failure to acknowledge this burgeoning body of research is a decision to champion professional opinion over research and every childs right to read.

See the AEU's full response below, share it, write to your union representatives and share your thoughts. I, for one, do not want to be on their side of history when it comes to teaching Victorian kids how to read.

https://www.aeuvic.asn.au/aeu-branch-council-rejects-government-mandate-teaching-practice?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR380tdQeC3s9VYhjXcDqAuXktp04UyWU9doNLHm_sdwnbdsjXCnwvtO7nQ_aem_AbxNuXk8Zj4hOZ05LURnpAk4NVPQF75QICfEihE-QDPTqg6ElIIgHA2P66hexPbShAuudQIvX0p3SYxQjo1VktXq

AEU Branch Council rejects government mandate on teaching practice | Australian Education Union (AEU) Victorian Branch That the AEU Joint Primary and Secondary Sector Council views with significant dismay the policy announcement by Victorian Education Minister, Ben Carroll, on the misnamed 'Making Best Practice Common Practice in The Education State', without proper consultation with the profession and the AEU.

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