About

This website is a volunteer effort, the result of a conversation between a speech pathologist (Caroline) and a software engineer (Ben). Frustrated with the state of reading education in Australia, we came up with this experiment to help spread awareness of the issue directly among parents. We hope that by making the phonics check easy to access and easy to share, this info might reach more people.

Do we need to point out that reading is incredibly important for all education? Kids who fall behind in reading skills struggle in many areas as a result – often because they haven’t been taught properly to begin with. Solid scientific evidence backs the effectiveness of phonics in reading education. This shouldn’t be controversial, but for political reasons it is. Too many kids have a negative experience of schooling as a result.

This could be improved through teacher education. When kids are not taught according to the science of reading, they can end up disengaged and frustrated in class. When teachers work according to the best available evidence, everyone benefits.

It’s incredible that this remains such an issue in 2023, and that it is taking so long to gain public awareness. We are glad to see a few more articles in the media recently. By sharing this site with families with young kids, you can help stimulate conversations between parents, teachers and principals – and accelerate the change that is so sorely needed.

Contact

Email: hello@phonicscheck.org

Acknowledgements

The word list and cute monster images are taken from the Literacy Hub phonics check sample, which carries the following notice:

© 2021 Commonwealth of Australia, unless otherwise indicated. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, unless otherwise indicated. This material has been adapted with permission of the Government of South Australia Department for Education. This material was first adapted by the Government of South Australia Department for Education with permission of the Standards and Testing 5 Agency of the UK Government. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.