This is a pivotal moment for ACT education

This is a pivotal moment for our education system. No longer will every school have the responsibility of deciding their own curricula and approach to teaching literacy and numeracy.

Instead, there will be a common approach based on what the evidence says about how children learn new skills and knowledge.

There will be a focus on things that really work. This includes explicit teaching, consistent routines, scaffolding, checking for understanding and guided inquiry.

It will mean a systematic approach to teaching beginner readers how to decode words. It will mean a focus on foundational numeracy concepts, revisiting them as new skills are taught.

Teachers will have access to sample scope and sequence documents to help them map out how they will teach literacy and numeracy in primary school.

High school teachers will also have sample units of work to refer to, cutting down time they currently spend on weekends and after school writing their lesson plans from scratch.

There will be consistent checks and assessments to ensure students are on track in their learning.

There will be a multi-tiered system, including small group tutoring and one-on-one support, to ensure every child can reach their potential.

This inquiry didn't happen overnight. A network of teachers, parents, allied health professionals and academics have been lobbying for this change in direction for some time.

This masthead has consistently highlighted that ACT children were falling through the cracks and not achieving their potential despite being in a wealthy jurisdiction.

Parents shared their distress at seeing their children's confidence fall when they failed to learn to read in school. But we also showed stories of hope and examples from other states and education systems that had followed an evidence-based approach.

While the signs are very positive, this is only the first step in a long journey that the ACT education system will need to go through. It is vital that the ACT government allocates appropriate funding and resources in order to achieve the outcomes that we need.

The territory could look to other states and education systems in Australia that have already begun this journey for ideas for how to stay on track. For instance, Tasmania has assembled an independent Lifting Literacy Oversight Monitoring Group to ensure their literacy strategy remains on course. The Canberra Goulburn Catholic Education system also has experience in making system-wide changes towards evidence-based teaching.

Perhaps the most important aspect of implementation is to earn the buy-in from as many people across the education system as possible.

There will no doubt be some teachers who will be confronted at the prospect of dropping some of the practices they have been using for years, such as the use of multi-cuing strategies to teach children to read. But as the ACT president of the Australian Education Union Angela Burroughs put it, teachers are professionals who are used to adapting to what the evidence shows is the best practice.

This is truly the opportunity of a generation to get our schooling right. If it succeeds, the benefits will be felt for years to come.