Victoria has just announced all government schools will be required to use phonics to teach reading from next year. This brings it in line with approaches in New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia.
Some Victorian schools already teach phonics. But Education Minister Ben Carroll says all government schools will need to do 25 minutes per day of “explicit teaching” of phonics from the first year of school (called prep in Victoria) to Year 2. Schools will also need to use an approach called “systematic synthetic phonics”.
