Page 255 - Week 01 - Thursday, 13 February 2020
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MADAM SPEAKER: The minister’s time has expired so I cannot take the point of order.
Education—phonics
MR HANSON: My question is to the minister for education. Minister, the federal education minister, Dan Tehan, has asked the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership to set up a taskforce to investigate how best to ensure that graduate teachers are taught about phonics and how to apply it in the classroom, following revelations that the key element of teaching children to read and write is overlooked in many university courses.
Minister, what phonics training is required for teachers entering the ACT education system?
MS BERRY: Our teachers are professionals and they use a number of ways to ensure that literacy is taught in an appropriate way that best meets the needs of every single student within every single classroom. That teaching also includes phonics and phonetic understanding. It is not restricted to those ways of teaching or those particular paths of literacy learning.
Mr Hanson: Madam Speaker, I raise a point of order on relevance. The question was not actually about what is being applied in the classroom; the question was specifically about what training graduate teachers are provided prior to entering the ACT education system.
MADAM SPEAKER: The minister has a minute and a half to respond.
MS BERRY: I did just spend a fair bit of time talking about the programs that are being conducted in our schools around the early years literacy program, which provides teachers with those skills and those extra tools to be able to ensure that every child learns in the best way possible and learns literacy within our schools. It is one tool. If the suggestion is that phonetic understanding, or phonics, is not used—it is used but it is not the only tool that is used by our teachers to ensure that literacy learning happens in our schools.
Mr Hanson: Madam Speaker, on a point of relevance again, the question is not about what is actually being used and what is being applied in the classroom; the question is very specifically about what training is provided to teachers graduating into our system. Are they trained in phonics prior to arriving? Is there any check on that? That is the substance of the question, rather than what is being applied.
MADAM SPEAKER: Minister, if you can go to the element of training for our graduate teachers in the time you have left—
MS BERRY: I think that is the question that the federal minister is going to, around what sort of education there is within the university space, if that is what Mr Hanson is referring to. But I have just explained the kind of professional development that our teachers receive once they come into our ACT schools. (Time expired.)
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