A 2006 survey found Tasmania has the lowest level of adult literacy in the country; fed up with an education system that he feels is letting children down, one cattle farmer decided to take matters into his own hands.
Despite receiving extra support in a smaller group at school, Iris's spelling deteriorated further."He pretty much read everything that was available to him," Ms Wilson said."He did that while also … single-handedly running the farm and [being] a dad."
"Sometimes she cracks a word or a sentence … with not a mistake in it and there's some quite amazing words and literally I well up, and I've got to concentrate to get to the end of the lesson."But Mr Roberts' concerns have gone beyond his own family and children who have dyslexia, who he called the "canaries in the coal mine".
Like the systematic approach that Mr Roberts is using, phonics are taught but in a less structured way. "If you don't learn those basics you can't keep going, at some point you can't just memorise whole words indefinitely at some point that's just too many words to remember and you have to be able to break them up and sound them out."A 2012 OECD study published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics report into adult literacy found 40 to 50 per cent of Australians aged between 15 and 74 are functionally illiterate.
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