Going back to the book to treat reading as a standalone subject has helped one school turn around desperate literacy levels over the past two years, and may offer evidence for others to follow.
Almost a quarter of students at The Grange P–12 College started year 7 reading at a prep-to-grade 2 level in 2024, providing educators with evidence that a complete overhaul of its literacy program was required.
In response, the Hoppers Crossing school expanded a trial to treat reading as a standalone subject, and saw an immediate boost in NAPLAN literacy results across year levels in 2026.
The Grange’s Core Literacy Coordinator, Clara Tran said secondary schools typically treat reading as something that happens within wider English classes.
“We made reading its own subject with its own teachers and its own curriculum and that’s why the reading data moved significantly,” Tran said.
One in three Australian students failed to meet NAPLAN benchmarks last year, with the gap widening between advantaged and disadvantaged students.
But students at The Grange – about 40 per cent of whom received adjustments in 2025 due to disability – defied the national trend by demonstrating sustained improvement.
More than 30 per cent of year seven to nine students recorded high relative growth on NAPLAN reading scores from 2024 to 2026, compared to 24 per cent of students at similar schools.
Tran said the Core Literacy model works because it has its own dedicated time and teachers from all subject areas are trained to deliver it.
“The evidence doesn’t support that reading fixes itself through exposure to texts in English class,” she said.
“It has to be taught directly, systematically on its own.”
Literacy academic Carol Christensen developed the whole-school approach to reading, which sees students split into small groups based on four levels of reading ability.
The Core Literacy model has also shown promising results at Braybrook College and Sunshine College, which the Grattan Institute has highlighted as a benchmark for school transformation.
This year, all year seven and eight students attended three weekly lessons at The Grange and were encouraged to undertake 20 minutes of reading at home after school.
Library data shows an almost 70 per cent increase in book borrowing since the program began.
Principal David Smillie said that although kids’ interest in reading had declined in the 50 years he’d been teaching, The Grange had pushed “a strong academic agenda” in the last three to four years.
“Kids are really engaged in reading, and certainly the Core Lit has helped promote that,” he said.
Smillie said parents faced a battle at home getting children to pick up books instead of mobile phones.
“All aspects of learning need to be habit. If we can build [reading] into their daily routine, that’s where we’ll really generate the skills,” he said.
While The Grange won’t know what impact Core Literacy has on VCE until the first cohort of students trained in it do exams, Smillie said the school already had one of its best VCE results last year.
“Interestingly, the dux at the school was also the dux of reading. She read a record 600 books in her time at the school.”
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