{"id":75170,"date":"2025-10-13T06:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T06:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/75170\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T06:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T06:59:08","slug":"minister-hails-structured-literacy-for-boosting-new-entrant-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/75170\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister hails structured literacy for boosting new entrant reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Government’s mandating of structured literacy is transforming the reading achievement of new entrants nationwide, Education Minister Erica Stanford says.<\/p>\n

Structured literacy<\/a> and the new English curriculum have been in place since Term 1 in primary schools across the country.<\/p>\n

New entrants are tested with a phonics check after 20 weeks at school, where children are asked to read aloud from a list of 40 words with the expectation the child should be able to correctly decode and sound out words.<\/p>\n

Watch Stanford speak at the post-Cabinet media conference live.<\/a><\/p>\n

Stanford said Term 3 phonics data showed that 58% were at or above expectations, up from 36% in Term 1, and that 43% of students exceeded expectations, more than double the Term 1 rate.<\/p>\n

She said the number of children needing targeted support had dropped from 52% to 33%, and that gains were seen across groups \u2014 M\u0101ori students at or above expectation rose from 25% to 43%, Pacific students from 27% to 43%, and low-decile school students from 18% to 35%.<\/p>\n

Year zero to year threes have been working on the relationship between letters and sounds since the beginning of the year.\u00a0 (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

Stanford said this showed a “significant boost” in reading success.<\/p>\n

“Our relentless focus on teaching the basics brilliantly is delivering. We followed the science, data and evidence, and in less than a year we are growing more confident readers and reversing the decades of decline in student achievement.”<\/p>\n

‘Back to standardised testing’ \u2013 Labour<\/p>\n

In July last year, when the phonics checks were announced, Labour’s then education spokesperson Jan Tinetti called the announcement “another backwards step for education”.<\/p>\n

“Erica Stanford is hellbent on a one-size-fits-all education system. National Standards have failed students before. Going back to standardised testing is taking us down the same path.<\/p>\n

“Just making all students sit the same test to get aggregate data at an oversight level won\u2019t help the kids that are struggling.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government’s mandating of structured literacy is transforming the reading achievement of new entrants nationwide, Education Minister Erica…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84,111,43,139,69,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-75170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-education","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}