Equity Guidelines

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Literacy

The development of literacy is a fundamental educational goal. Teachers play a vital role in enabling students to become literate and so attain the potential to become a life-long learner.

There have been many studies that have shown that literacy levels are significantly lower among students from low socio-economic backgrounds. Recent data shows that there is a significant correlation to the socio-economic background of the student and the student’s AIM data.

Literacy, language awareness and reading can be taught effectively. Research shows that the human brain is wired to learn oral language but it is not wired to learn to read. Yet reading skills form the basis of all school level learning. “Research indicates that a student’s future academic success can be predicted by his or her reading level at the end of grade three” (Wolfe and Nevills 2004).

Learning to read is facilitated by explicit teaching and explicit practice in the home. Students from low socio-economic backgrounds often require extra teaching of the function of reading. Programs that include the teaching of phonemic awareness, alphabetic awareness and oral language are the most complete system of teaching the ability to read.

Typically, students from low socio-economic backgrounds have been brought up in a household where casual and intimate language registers are the norm. They have not learned (through immersion or through explicit teaching) how to use the consultative or the formal language register. Frozen language register is known of but not employed in the upbringing of the child from a low socio-economic background.

See the following information to learn more about literacy, socio-economic disadvantage and the implications these have on schools:

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Positioning literacy and socio-economic disadvantage in Victorian government schools

Since 1999, literacy and numeracy data point to ongoing improvements in standards across year levels. Most importantly, the results of those students who have previously had low performance have improved.

“Despite all that has been achieved over the past four years, we need to concentrate further upon improved learning outcomes for students. Some groups of students continue to have poor levels of literacy and other basic skills. These students can be concentrated in particular schools and particular areas of the state. They tend to have high rates of absenteeism from school and are more likely to leave schools early. There are also high variations in outcomes between classes within schools and between schools with similar student populations. “ - Blueprint for Government Schools, November, 2003

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Positioning literacy and socio-economic disadvantage in a national context

Effective literacy and numeracy are key skills which enable all Australians to successfully participate in schooling until the completion of Year 12, and in further study, training or work.

In Australian society proficiency in English literacy is of major importance for every Australian's personal, social and cultural development. For a modern democratic society, high levels of literacy are crucial to the quality of civic, cultural and economic activity. High levels of literacy for all Australians are required so that each individual can deal confidently with the broadening scope and multiple uses of literacy in all spheres of society. (Department of Employment Education and Youth Affairs, 1998)

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Positioning literacy and socio-economic disadvantage in a global context

Disadvantage at school can be seen to be strongly linked to disadvantage at home, it is clear that educational disadvantage is born not at school but in the home, it may be predicted that disadvantage is likely to perpetuate itself through educational under-achievement and a greater likelihood of economic marginalisation and social exclusion.
(A League Table of Educational Disadvantage in Rich Nations, United Nations Children’s Fund Inocenti Research Centre, 2002)

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Literacy and socio-economic disadvantage

Key Issues/understandings

  • Given sufficient time and appropriate support, all students have the capacity to learn a range of literate practices and to improve their learning in these practices
  • All students have the potential to achieve improved success in school-based literacy practices, which support possibilities and practices for their capacity and intrinsic motivation for, lifelong learning
  • Students have diverse life and learning experiences which, with responsive teaching, provide a platform for focused and individualised learning to learn pathways
  • Differences and disparity in student outcomes in literacy, irrespective of indexes of socio-economic disadvantage can be redressed:
    • within a school culture of high expectations for all students
    • whereby all teachers through responsive teaching contingent upon students’ learning needs, interests, with continuous and relevant feedback, accept a shared responsibility for all students and
    • all teachers believe that all students can learn at higher levels
  • Success in school literacy, is for some students from low socio-economic backgrounds, a predictor of comparatively lower literacy performance levels, as compared with some students from less socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds
  • Literacy is a dynamic, complex and multifaceted social and cultural construct which requires students to meaningfully construct, engage with, respond to and critique, a range of literate practices and forms, for multiple purposes in a range of contexts
  • Students whose home literacy practices most closely resemble school literacy practices are more successful in school.
  • School success is sometimes harder to achieve for students in families disadvantaged by poverty, with literacy practices which are perhaps:
    • different from those valued at school and
    • with language and cultural backgrounds different from their teachers
  • The foundations of success in early school literacy learning and subsequent successful outcomes as measured on standardised tests, are derived from a number of key factors including:  
    • pre-natal care
    • a supportive home literacy environment (in particular, exposure to print)
    • phonemic awareness and
    • in some cultures, knowledge of nursery rhymes

Success in school-based literacy practices beyond the early years of schooling, requires students to experience continued, multiple and differentiated opportunities for enhancing meta-cognitive and meta-linguistic awareness.

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Implications for Schools

1.      A strategic, whole school capacity building approach to change with a dynamic and synergetic interrelationship between:

  • Professional learning targeted to the needs of the school in particular: increased understanding about how children learn and teacher expectations and attitudes regarding children from low socio-economic backgrounds
  • Distributed leadership to develop the capacity for schools and networks of schools to develop as learning organisations
  • Equitable and sustained improved student outcomes in literacy and
  • School improvement

2.      Innovations occurring in curriculum, assessment, pedagogy, school organisation need to be presented less as external demands or formal requirements and more as opportunities for creativity, initiative and the exercise of professional leadership and responsibility.

3.      Schools should consider more creative and innovatory practices in the way the school day/ week/ year is organised and in the definition of roles and responsibilities for the range of professionals working in them.

4.      Schools should provide a high quality working environment for teachers as professionals and as adults, to promote and sustain job satisfaction.

  

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Programs and curriculum initiatives in Victorian government schools