“I always say in jest to people, if you type NAPLAN in a Word document or on the computer, it autocorrects to NAPALM, which I think says it all.” Associate professor Michael Nagel, an educational psychologist at the University of ...

Australia’s schools and their students are on trial once more: annual NAPLAN testing will be held next week. This year, however, an education lecturer wishes something would change. Dr Kathy Bates of Western Sydney University scrutinised how NAPLAN writing papers may ...

A dispute between experts has emerged on whether Australian schools should adopt the same Year 1 phonics check currently being conducted in the UK. Phonics refers to the relationship between sounds people hear in spoken language and words seen in ...

While the federal government has endorsed a phonics check for Year 1 students, one researcher has warned that the check should not overextend its reach. Dr Jennifer Buckingham, an education researcher from the Centre of Independent Studies, recently completed a report ...

Victorian libraries want parents of youngsters to don their eyeglasses and get reading aloud. Their new campaign, 1000 Books Before School, aims for parents to recite this many tomes between childbirth and the commencement of school, to instill a love of ...

Australian teenagers with poor reading skills are no worse off than those with medium reading proficiency when it comes to future employment, a new study from the University of Melbourne suggests. The research, from UniMelb economists, found poor readers at ...

Established in 1916 to provide local school kids a distraction from the horrors of the First World War, The School Magazine, produced by the New South Wales Education Department, is the world’s longest running children’s literary magazine. It has just ...

The 2016 edition of Word Mania, an online literacy challenge for students in years 1 through 9, was launched last week, with practice now open for verbose youngsters looking to share in $100,000 worth of prizes. The game requires loquacious learners ...

A study conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has revealed Australian primary school students scored the lowest of any English-speaking nation in an international test of reading. In the first international assessment of reading ...

Students throughout the Sydney region are being encouraged by teachers to get creative, as part of a literacy competition called The Poetry Object. The competition, run by The Red Room Company, encourages primary and secondary students as well as their ...