Getting it Right from the Start

Overview

What is Getting it Right from the Start?

More children are starting school without strong spoken communication, also known as oral language, and pre-reading skills, particularly children from families experiencing adversity. For these children, making the transition to literacy can be more difficult.

Getting it Right from the Start compares literacy outcomes between a specifically-designed oral language and reading instructional approach in the early years of school, and standard teaching practice.

Why is this issue important?

Educational attainment is recognised as the most influential social determinant of life-long physical and mental health, and school engagement predicts later social, emotional and economic wellbeing.

The Australian Early Development Census is a nationwide measure of early childhood development, completed by teachers about all children at school-entry. The census shows significant socioeconomic status-based disparities across all key areas of early childhood development. These key areas are also known as domains.

Children in areas of greatest socioeconomic disadvantage have the highest rates of developmental vulnerability on the language and cognitive domains (12.4%), compared to those in the most advantaged (3%) areas. These recognised inequities are also reflected in later schooling and do not resolve over time. 

Children who do not master the basics of reading in the early years of school:

• face long-term academic challenges
• are often ambivalent towards school
• may face a range of behavioural, social, vocational and social-emotional difficulties into adolescence and adulthood. 

Addressing these student needs becomes more challenging and expensive the further children progress through school.

In contrast, research has shown the feasibility of establishing the foundations of reading in the early primary school years to place children on more positive developmental trajectories.

What does the project aim to achieve?

Getting it Right from the Start aims to:

• Embed a school improvement system (Response to Intervention) that supports oral language and reading and can be adapted to other areas of the curriculum.
• Understand the barriers and facilitators to implementing the Response to Intervention at the school level.
• Enable equitable learning outcomes for all students.

A Response to Intervention (RTI) is a framework for considering the academic and behavioural needs of children in mainstream classrooms. Using RTI, teachers can quickly identify children who are having learning difficulties and provide targeted, evidence-based support. The aim is to help children ‘keep up’ so they don’t have to ‘catch up’.

Schools can adapt learnings and processes developed through the project to any area of the curriculum beyond oral language and reading. 

Our approach

We're testing the processes and impact of implementing an intervention system in schools, with a focus on improving equity by targeting low language performing schools.

The project involves 16 schools from the Metropolitan, Northeast and Northwest Victoria regions. 

The Victorian Government Department of Education and Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools are project collaborators, ensuring implementation is relevant and sustainable in schools. 

Research design combines:

1. Staged rollout to determine impact.
2. Detailed implementation methodology to ensure interventions are implemented and sustained within a school system over time.
3. Qualitative data to investigate the barriers and facilitators to success. 

Our progress to date

Getting it Right from the Start began in 2021 and will run until 2025. 

Preparation phase

A systematic review was completed that identifies evidence-based Tier 2 interventions for improving oral language and reading outcomes for students in the early years of school.

This work is a valuable resource for schools to use when considering Tier 2 interventions. The work was funded by the Victorian Government Department of Education and Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools.

Preliminary step

A preliminary step was conducted in 2021 in two schools. This work identified potential barriers and enablers to implementation and informed important refinements to the main phase protocol to enable success.

The paper, An Implementation Case Study for the Response to Intervention (RTI) Approach for Oral Language and Reading Instruction in the Early Years of Primary School was published.

Main phase

In the main phase, 16 schools are involved and were randomly allocated into:

• Cohort 1: Implementation commencement 2022
• Cohort 2: Implementation commencement 2023

As part of the project, schools aim to establish a RTI framework over two years. Schools are supported with professional learning including a course, resources and an implementation support partner.

Student outcomes are collected at the start of each year. School leadership and teachers are asked to complete surveys at different timepoints and are interviewed yearly to understand the process of implementation.

How RTI can support schools

An RTI is a multi-tiered conceptual framework for considering the academic and behavioural needs of children in mainstream classrooms.

RTI provides universal access to high-quality classroom instruction in language and reading for all students.  The framework provides intensive intervention for those students identified as ‘at-risk’, i.e. intensity is proportional to the needs of individual students.

RTI supports student learning through early identification of students with additional learning needs and early intervention. 

There are three tiers in an RTI model.

Tier 1

Tier 1 refers to universal whole of population/classroom delivery. This supports teachers to provide high-quality, evidence-based instruction in oral language and reading for all students.

Tier 2

Tier 2 refers to interventions targeting specific needs identified within a subgroup of students, e.g. students identified as at-risk for language and/or reading learning difficulties.

Interventions are more intensively focused, allowing more time and specialised instruction for students’ skill levels. Ideally delivered to no more than 15% of students, tier 2 interventions are expected to accelerate learning and minimise the impact of difficulties over time.

Tier 3

Tier 3 refers to more intensive and specialised assessment and intervention for individual students based on the severity of their difficulties. Tier 3 interventions are ideally delivered to no more than 5% of students. 

Central to the RTI model is ongoing universal screening, assessment and progress monitoring. This generates data to inform instructional practice at each of these tiers. The data also informs student’s placement in, and movement across, the tiers.