Boyask, RuthMilne, John2025-12-172025-12-172025-05-09The Conversation, May 9, 2025. https://theconversation.com/kiwi-kids-once-led-the-world-in-reading-this-1950s-primary-school-syllabus-still-has-lessons-for-today-253719http://hdl.handle.net/10292/20416There is a well-known whakatauki (Māori proverb) that goes: “Ka mua, ka muri” – “walking backwards into the future”. It applies to many areas of life, but in education the idea of looking to the past to inform our way forward seems more relevant than ever. New Zealand was once a world leader in reading. In the early 1970s, as leading literacy educationalist Warwick Elley reminds us, Kiwi teenagers performed best of all countries participating in the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational 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 ZealandTeachingPhonicsReadingLearning to readstructured literacyOther Form of Assessable OutputOpenAccess10.64628/AA.g6hxpe4cm