Girls are still doing better than boys at school but it was Pākehā children's decline in literacy that brought down the country's score in an international test.

OPINION: Lewis sat comfortably in his chair and looked around at his fellow students. The graduation ceremony was going well and he would soon collect his certificate and be a qualified car mechanic.

He thought back over the course he'd just completed. He'd really looked forward to learning about how a car works, but had found out that it wasn't important to understand the process. He just had to concentrate on the driving aspects.

He'd learned that most cars work well and some had a few minor glitches, but were generally OK.

Of course, some didn't seem to work very efficiently, or even at all. However, as long as a reasonable percentage worked, that was fine. It wasn't necessary to actually open the bonnet and discover why some cars didn't work as they should.

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Of course it's ridiculous. But that's exactly what happens on teacher training courses when we're training teachers to teach reading. As an independent literacy specialist, I provide training courses for teachers, special needs staff and teacher aides. We cover how literacy develops, what stages learners go through and what processing skills (memory, etc) are needed at each stage. In the process, we identify where the specific gaps are and why some learners fall through those gaps.

123rf Teachers taking supplementary literacy training ask, "Why weren't we taught this stuff on our teacher training courses?"

All sounding logical so far? Surely we need to understand why some children fail at reading, or we won't stand much chance of fixing it? But no. The most common comment at the end of the course is "Why weren't we taught this stuff on our teacher training courses?"

As an example of specific aspects, research dating back to the 1980s shows how important phonological awareness is for early literacy, but many teachers of young children struggle to define phonological awareness correctly, let alone understand all its aspects, spot gaps and know how to develop it.

Please don't misunderstand me here. I'm not criticising teachers – my experience is that the vast majority are creative, passionate about what they do, eager for more knowledge and actively developing their toolbox of skills. I have a huge respect for those teachers. But surely it shouldn't be up to them to try and fill these gaps themselves. Why are we not teaching these skills?

STUFF We know we're failing 20 per cent of our learners. Why are we not jumping up and down in agitation about this?

The main reason for bringing the subject up at this point is that the latest PIRLS report has just come out. This major international study (Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study) covering 50 countries is s done every five years and measures reading achievement for students in their fourth year of education – typically, 10-year olds.

For New Zealand, there are mixed results. One worrying trend is that we have slipped in the country rankings, but there are more concerning statistics.

PIRLS has four benchmarks, Low, Intermediate, High and Advanced. Encouragingly, 11 per cent of our learners reached the Advanced benchmark. This is very similar to the international median (10 per cent), although lower than Australia (16 per cent) and significantly lower than high-performing countries, like Singapore (29 per cent).

More worrying, though, is the other end of the scale. A proportion of learners don't have good enough achievement to even meet the Low benchmark. For example, 3 per cent of learners in Singapore and England were below this benchmark. The average score for all countries was 4 per cent. New Zealand had a whopping 10 per cent of learners in this category. In other words, 10 per cent of our 10-year-olds didn't even manage to score on a scale, which only requires the ability to comprehend very simple passages.

So what does this show us about how New Zealand is doing on literacy teaching? Well, we certainly have high-performing literacy learners, but not as many as we should, perhaps. However, we're clearly not meeting the needs of others.

I believe this is due to the methodology we're using in primary schools. Some interesting American research shows that 60 per cent of learners will succeed whatever the method. In essence, they just need a reasonable amount of exposure to text.

However, the same research says that 40 per cent of learners need a more structured approach. Some of these may have specific learning difficulties, such as dyslexia – the proportion of learners with dyslexia is considered to be around 10 per cent. However, others don't have a particular learning difficulty, but do need a more structured approach to literacy.

The Ministry of Education has recognised for some time that our current methods don't meet the needs of all learners. It even said several years ago that it considered that our methods were failing 1 in 5 of our learners.

Just think about that for a second. We know we're failing 20 per cent of our learners. Why are we not jumping up and down in agitation about this? Nothing much has changed over those years. In fact, the PIRLS statistics show we've actually gone backwards.

It's time that we started being much more structured and research-based in how we teach reading in schools. It's not enough to just present learners with a range of books and other reading "opportunities". We need to actively teach the skills and knowledge that learners need, in a way that meets all needs.

Other countries have a detailed literacy curriculum that specifies what phonic patterns need to be covered and gives a logical order. The more successful countries also integrate reading and spelling, which in many ways are two sides of the same coin.

The frustrating thing is that we have so many great things going on in our schools, and a huge pool of talented and dedicated teachers. Is it too much to ask that we tap into that resource and get our act together on the core literacy skills?

* Ros Lugg is managing director of The Learning Staircase, which produces literacy resources and trains literacy teachers.