Milne, John2025-12-172025-12-172025-10-20The Conversation, October 20, 2025. https://theconversation.com/why-claims-of-transformational-school-reading-improvement-are-premature-267522http://hdl.handle.net/10292/20415The government has made some bold claims for its school reading policies – including that early results have been “transformational”. But we should be careful about rushing to judgement this early. Following the release of a Ministry of Education report on phonics checks over the first three terms of this school year, Education Minister Erica Stanford said the results showed “a significant boost in reading success” and that “in less than a year we are reversing the decades of decline in student achievement”. [...]CC BY ND. We believe in the free flow of information. Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence.390304 Primary educationNew ZealandEducationPhonicsLiteracyReadingstructured literacyOther Form of Assessable OutputOpenAccesshttps://doi.org/10.64628/AA.mkwe7pdrh