EduResearch Matters By Leanne Fray, Maren Aukerman and Rachel Birch
Learning to read isn’t the only right children have.
Across Australia and internationally, reading instruction has become a highly politicised space. Government introduced phonics‑centred mandates, scripted programs and high‑stakes assessments have a clear moral framing: these policies, we are told, protect children’s right to read. To question them can feel like questioning children’s futures.
Yet something important is missing from this conversation.
Children do indeed have a right to learn to read. But reading is not the only right they have.
Recent debates about the “science of reading” tend to reduce literacy to a technical problem: how efficiently can children be taught to decode print? In this framing, the measure of success is narrow and immediate—test scores, benchmarks, compliance with approved methods. What is less visible are the wider rights, identities and forms of participation that literacy education is meant to support.
Read the research here
