Unconvention Update: Reading
Teachers feel an overloaded education system is making it harder to give children the focused reading instruction and support they need.
The Unconvention has kicked off in earnest with our first topic: Reading. I’ve asked why all children don’t leave primary school with the ability to read? What does the education system need to do in the next few years to make sure it happens.
The discussion over the last few days has been fascinating because, unlike many debates in education, there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of ideological trench warfare going on. In fact, most people broadly agree on the problem. Where things become more interesting is in trying to work out why, despite extraordinary effort from teachers, so many children are still struggling with literacy.
One of the strongest themes emerging is the sense that schools are trying to do too much, and that reading, despite everyone claiming it is foundational, is quietly losing ground in the timetable. A number of contributors pointed to the suggested literacy allocations in the Primary Curriculum Framework and questioned whether they bear any resemblance to the reality of teaching children to read. Most teachers already spend significantly more time on literacy than officially allocated because they know instinctively that many children need it. Yet at the same time, schools are expected to accommodate an ever-expanding curriculum, wellbeing initiatives, digital learning, performances, projects, programmes and events. Somewhere in all of that, the basic business of teaching children to read fluently can begin to feel squeezed.
What was particularly interesting was how often people returned to the idea that we may have drifted away from the actual science of how children learn. Several contributors spoke about structured literacy and the science of reading, while others questioned why Ireland continues to pour substantial resources into Reading Recovery despite ongoing concerns about outcomes and evidence. There seems to be a growing frustration that teachers are often expected to solve increasingly complex literacy difficulties without receiving enough training in reading instruction itself. For all the talk of inclusion and differentiation, many teachers still feel underprepared when it comes to supporting children with dyslexia, language difficulties or other literacy-related needs.
Another recurring theme was the increasing complexity of classrooms. It is clear from the discussion that many teachers feel they are firefighting. Large class sizes, a huge range of abilities and increasingly complex additional needs mean that literacy intervention often becomes diluted. One contributor pointed out that literacy support groups can contain six children despite some of those pupils really needing daily one-to-one instruction. Others spoke about the lack of SET hours and the reality that even when schools identify needs early, they often simply do not have the capacity to provide the level of intervention required.
At the same time, there was also honesty about the role of home. Quite a few contributors made the point that schools cannot carry the entire burden alone. Reading to children at home, reducing screen time, encouraging books and reinforcing learning outside school still matter enormously. That can sometimes be an uncomfortable thing to say publicly because there is a tendency in education debates to pretend every problem must have a school-based solution, but the reality is that literacy development does not stop at the school gate.
Perhaps the most provocative idea emerging from the discussion, however, is whether modern education has become slightly obsessed with engagement at the expense of mastery. There were several comments questioning whether we sometimes confuse children being busy, stimulated or entertained with children actually learning. Reading is not a naturally acquired skill for many children. It requires practice, repetition, discipline and sustained attention over time. None of those things are particularly fashionable words in education at the moment, but they kept surfacing again and again throughout the discussion.
What makes this conversation interesting to me is that it opens up a series of questions.
If reading truly is the gateway to almost all future learning, should literacy dominate the timetable in the early years of primary school?
Have we overcrowded the curriculum to the point where schools are trying to do everything and therefore struggling to do the basics exceptionally well?
Should every teacher receive far more intensive training in the science of reading?
Are we too reluctant to talk about direct instruction and practice because they sound unfashionable?
And perhaps most uncomfortably of all, have we created a system where teachers are expected to compensate for every societal problem while simultaneously being given less time to focus on the core academic foundations children need most?
I suspect that’s where the conversation may need to go next.