Speaking alongside the UK’s former schools minister Nick Gibb, Ben Carroll revealed at the Australian School Improvement Summit last week that it was US education journalist Emily Hanford’s podcast that first opened his eyes to the ‘reading wars’ and the discredited approaches to reading instruction that had taken hold in schools.

“I’ve only been the (education) minister for just literally 12 months. And one thing I always do as a minister is go outside and read as many books and get as much reference material as I can,” he told political journalist and radio commentator Paul Kelly.

“And so, one of the things I listened to was the podcast Sold a Story … and the great history on the reading wars over 50 years around the world, essentially.

“…I [dug] a bit more into the science of learning; that what does go on behind our eyeballs is complicated. It’s not a natural process, and the kids needs to be taught.”

Educators, dyslexia advocacy groups and literacy experts have long criticised the Victorian Government’s lack of commitment to drive evidence-based teaching practice at scale.

While other jurisdictions and school systems were making moves to weed out instructional approaches rooted in whole language/ balanced literacy, until now Victoria seemed unwilling to take a stand on the evidence.

But Carroll has stepped up to the plate and offered hope to those trying to drive change at the grassroots, summit delegates told EducationHQ.

In June the Minister announced ‘the evidence is in’, unveiling a plan to embed explicit instruction and structured literacy in every public school.

“I took it to the Cabinet. I essentially initiated the ‘mandate boat’. I announced it as a mandate, and also announced that we’re taking away, off the curriculum and the learning model, the ‘whole word’ approach,” Carroll said.

“The press release is very clear: systematic synthetic phonics daily – 25 minutes a day – and decodable books, and we’ve got representatives from the Department here that have been doing a tremendous job.”

Carroll said from the outset he knew improving reading outcomes was an objective he wanted to pursue in the portfolio.

“I was a former youth justice minister, so I saw first-hand kids that hadn’t been taught to read properly were in the youth justice system.

“And, similarly to Nick, I just knew this was something that I wanted to make my mission.”

Despite resistance from the Australian Education Union spread in the media, Carroll said he was reassured that teachers themselves backed the mandate before it went public.

“I got some pushback: ‘I wouldn’t go down this track if I was you, minister’ from the union.

“…(but) before I had made the announcement, I spoke to about 650 teachers at a forum in Melbourne.

“And basically, [I] showed them this is where I was heading, and I got a standing ovation.

“They were making very clear to me, they wanted a decision from government and a decision from the centre on how to teach kids to read.

“They had two systems running, whole language (and) phonics, and they wanted a clear direction.”

In June, EducationHQ reported that many Victorian teachers were either quitting or reconsidering their future with the teachers’ union over its rejection of Carroll’s structured literacy and explicit teaching reform.

Overall, the response from schools and teachers has been ‘overwhelmingly’ positive, Carroll told delegates.  

He noted that at a roundtable with ten regional school principals recently, just one was opposed to the changes.

“One said, ‘I’m making it very clear, I’m not doing what you asked for’.

“We sort of held him back (afterwards) and had another chat. So, when I asked him, ‘well, why not?’, he didn’t have the evidence on the whole language (approach),” Carroll shared.

“We’ve got to take our principals on a journey. What’s going on at universities (and in) our teaching profession is critically important, too.”

Carroll said the state was ‘very lucky’ to have ‘The Pamela Snow’s of the world’ to help guide the shift in the teacher training space, but flagged current teachers would need to be supported ‘every step of the way’ to implement the new learning model.

Meanwhile, Gibb said the science of learning movement was spreading internationally, deeming Australia the next country poised to ‘take this leap’.

The impact of Handford’s podcast had been profound, he suggested.

“It’s compelling and brilliantly made. It is sweeping America that podcast … it’s changing the law state by state.

“Some states are banning multi-cueing approaches to reading…” he told delegates.

Victorian school leader and author Dr Greg Ashman joined AERO program director Sarah Richardson to reflect on the Summit's key themes, offering two notes of caution. PHOTO: Ben Nicol

Earlier in the day one school principal asked Dr David Howes, Deputy Secretary of Schools and Regional Services in Victoria, what he had to say to those educators who had been flying the science of learning flag for years, often working in isolation within schools to try and bring about change.

Howes indicated the Department had perhaps taken too long to bring in system-wide reform, but had been chipping away at making the shift for some time.

But one delegate later told EducationHQ this was a misleading account, and that the Department had not taken any action for years despite the weight of evidence right in front of it.

“I went and had a look at essentially three international reports, one from the UK, one from Australia that Brendan Nelson had commissioned, and then one that Bill Clinton commissioned on his way out of office that George Bush picked up as well,” Carroll said.

“And they all came down very clearly on the evidence that phonics was the way to be teaching kids how to read.”

Victorian school leader and author Dr Greg Ashman offered up some concluding remarks and reflections on the day, raising two notes of caution.

“Firstly, we risk terms like ‘knowledge-rich’ and ‘explicit teaching’ becoming buzzwords that people on the outside use because they are fashionable yet the original meaning gets lost,” he later reflected in a Substack post.

“This is already apparent when proponents of inquiry learning insist it somehow includes a lot of explicit teaching.”

Secondly, we should not forget the strong resistance that’s out there, he warned.

“…in a room full of people heatedly agreeing with each other, it is easy to underestimate the intensity of the opposition to these ideas…

“When you drill down past the anonymous trolls, you often find people embedded in parts of the education establishment,” Ashman wrote.

Nevertheless, the school leader is encouraged by the reform now underway.

“I am optimistic about positive evidence-informed change in Victoria now we have a bottom-up and top-down pincer move,” he shared on X.

Read more of our coverage on the Australian School Improvement Summit here, here and here.