South Australia first to introduce the phonics screening checks in 2018 for Year 1 students in its government schools
The phonics screening check, mandated for Year 1 students in South Australian public schools from 2018, had 20 pseudo words and 20 real words read to them to measure their grasp of simple letter combinations.
South Australia was the first Australian state to deliver phonics screening checks in Term 3 to improve the literacy of more than 14,000 Year 1 students in all government schools in 2018.
Year 1 students in South Australia’s public schools continued to show improvements in literacy in 2023 with the phonics screening check results reaching 71% – the fifth consecutive year of improvements.
The mandated phonic tests, to measure students’ grasp of simple letter combinations read to them, came after a trial in South Australia in 2017 of phonics screening checks, following the same one used in England the previous year. The check had 20 pseudo words and 20 real words, although half the real words were intended to be less frequently encountered in text.
Fifty-six schools, involving 4,406 students volunteered to take part in the South Australian trial run by Flinders University experts in 2017. Only 15% of the South Australian students managed to score over the threshold mark of 32 out of a possible 40. By contrast, the figure was 81% in England. But this difference had discrepancies such as 52% of the South Australian children taking part being in Reception year. South Australian Reception students could only correctly pronounce an average of 11 of the 40 samples while Year 1 students had an average of 22. One fifth of the students were unable to read any words correctly and around 4% of the Year 1 children were unable to read a single word correctly. At the other end of the scale, one in six or almost 17% of Year 1 pupils read between 36 and 40 words correctly.
Teachers and school leaders were overwhelmingly positive about the phonics screening test that were reported to be a “good eyeopener for teachers”. Announcing the phonics screening test for Year 1 classes in 2018 in South Australian public schools, education minister in the new Liberal state government John Gardner said the 2017 trial had “particularly important outcomes … with more students failing to successfully sound out all of the words than had been expected.” . More than 2000 teachers and leaders attended phonics screening checks training.
More than 1300 public school teachers and leaders attended professional learning in phonics in 2023 and, from 2024, the education department was expanding early reading support to include learning for Year 2 teachers with a focus on oral reading fluency.
Following the phonics check success in South Australia, New South Wales completed a trial of phonics screening in 2020 and mandated it for all public schools in 2021, with Victoria and Tasmania introducing the check for all Year 1 students in public schools in 2023.
