Parent of a Canberra kid? Here's the budget that matters

For children in the ACT and their families, this coming ACT budget is the one to watch. Why? It'll tell us whether the current ACT Labor/Greens government is really serious about reversing the issue that 30 per cent of our kids are getting to Year 9 without becoming proficient readers.

For those who have simply been assuming that our education system took care of teaching all of our kids to read, and who are not aware of recent developments, here's a quick update.

After two decades of reviews, reports and statistics that ACT schools were underperforming compared to the rest of Australia, the ACT government commissioned yet another review into literacy and numeracy.

The findings were similar to in the past - we have a problem with our children's reading levels - but this time, the global evidence around how children learn to read was impossible to ignore, and the expert panel recommended sweeping, evidence-based changes to how we teach literacy in our schools.

As parents reading the recent report (yes, the full version!), relief was an understatement. Sue teared up. Steph actually cried. This means, kids like ours will be taught using the best possible evidence and resources. If they aren't keeping up, there will be evidence-based interventions to ensure they catch up.

Implemented correctly, their recommendations will change the lives of thousands of children.

It's a world away from what our own sons experienced in their first few years of schooling in Canberra.

Sue's son was offered tutoring based on reading techniques so outdated that when she told a teacher friend from the US this week our government had only just accepted the research on reading instruction, she nearly fell off her chair.

She declined, pulled him out of school and, with experienced tutors (of which we don't have nearly enough), taught him herself.

Steph's son stayed in school, where he was faced with falling further and further behind peers as interventions failed to appear.

Now, as she waits for the new system to begin implementation in 2024, she's completed a six-week course herself, to help her eight year old before and after school so he can try to catch up - a task that becomes exponentially harder the longer it's left.

So what's the catch with the recommendations? Money, of course. Here's why we're keeping a close eye on the upcoming ACT budget. Changing practices that have been entrenched in ACT's public schools over the last 20 years comes at a cost.

From calculations we've seen, reversing it by setting up our teachers with the right training, the right resources, centralised support and proper interventions for all those kids who have been left behind, will cost at least $20+ million a year over four years.

It will take years to get us back on track. It's a lot. But so is the cost of 30 per cent of our kids not reading at their age level by the time they are teens.

Surely, every parent, when voting this coming October, will be wanting a government that is taking their child's literacy seriously?

One that, in accepting all 14 of the expert panel's findings on a report the ACT government themselves commissioned, is willing to find the money to do everything it recommends.

After all, what this report recommends - using evidence-based practices to teach our children to read - is what we expect from our public schools.

Of course, we also want our children to be happy and engaged. We can tell you, if kids can't read, they aren't happy.

The panel has given us a roadmap to turning around the two decades of practices which have let down a generation of children.

Surely, implementing the solutions is an urgent priority.

If that doesn't come from the current Labor government, via a June budget that fully funds the literacy panel's recommendations, there are others standing in the sidelines already pointing to this issue - no doubt they will take up the mantel instead.

It's not long till June but there's still time to ensure the solutions are funded.

Yes, that's retraining teachers, the readers, the vital but costly interventions for all those kids who have missed out or aren't keeping up - all of it.

Now that's a budget worth watching.