This week, Lyndon Riggall talks about reading - from reading scores, school libraries to building a reading culture - at school and at home. Lots of points to ponder and some positives to embrace as we get over the bumps to attain a smoother road.
It is an interesting time to be someone who is passionate about literacy in Tasmania. It seems that no sooner had we run the gauntlet of Book Week and its inevitable articles about what—if anything—is appropriate costuming, then we hit a fresh round of delicious finger-pointing as the latest batch of PISA results was shared, comparing Australian schools with those around the world. Once again, Australian reading scores are disappointingly in decline. They are above the OECD average, and PISA claims that there is a global, worrying decline evident in the data that is not specific to any one country, but to those of us who care, the downward trend in Australia is nevertheless significantly real and really significant.
Well might we ask who is to blame, but although that is an interesting question, it is perhaps not nearly as interesting as another question that occurs to most people who look at the data. You see, the global trend is being bucked by some countries… as one example, alongside improvement in Maths and Science, England’s reading scores are rising. In a society that seems that it would share many of the challenges and competing demands for the attention of children that we might see in Australia, this is an impressive shift, and one I think we can learn from. Tasmania, in many ways, has been following the educational principles of England in recent years. Thanks to the Lifting Literacy initiative, there is a clear and consistent evidence-based approach to teaching reading in classrooms that seems to be working, and this, along with regular screening processes to ensure that students get the intervention they need as early as possible, is showing signs of really helping growth. These ideas are the same in English schools, with one key difference: they have been doing this kind of work for more than a decade. If we are going to see these kinds of results in Tasmania, the best thing that we can do is give these initiatives time enough to see progress. We are playing a long game.
There is also one potential area of success here in Tasmania that I think it still remains for us to explore with real depth: the creation and promotion of reading cultures. Teaching literacy is one thing, but it changes everything for young people if literacy is lived. One key factor that might have influenced England’s PISA results is evident in the National Literacy Trust’s latest Annual Literacy Survey in the U.K.: For the first time after several years of decline, reading for enjoyment and daily reading are on the rise, and this change was noted in both boys and girls. The Arts Council of England’s 2026 National Year of Reading slogan is, “Go All In,” with the tagline, “If you’re into it, read into it,” suggesting that rather than some kind of virtuous act of self-improvement, reading can be a bridge to the things that we really want to know more about: sport, music, fashion, gaming or anything else. It perhaps goes without saying—but for me will never actually go without saying—that access to libraries, and in particular school libraries, staffed with knowledgeable professionals, is an essential part of building this culture in our schools. Some schools in the United Kingdom don’t have libraries, it’s true, but the government has committed to ensuring that by 2029, all state schools do. Student selected reading programs seem to be falling out of favour in many countries, but in schools in England it is still very common for teachers to start with, or include in their lesson, DEAR time: Drop Everything and Read. One of the great signs of a school with a health reading culture is that when students finish work in other subjects they opt to pick up a book to fill the rest of the time they spend waiting.
Young people are highly aspirational—they strive to become what they can see. I cannot tell you how many times I have sat in a professional learning session on the subject of literacy and wondered what kinds of books the facilitator might be reading; what stories shaped their childhood; what authors changed their lives. We bemoan the state of literacy in Tasmania, but are we all modeling reading culture ourselves? What is sitting on our bedside table? When someone asks us what we are reading, do we have an answer for them?
In the first light of a new era of igniting passion for books, one organisation I deeply admire for its contribution to creating reading cultures in Tasmania is Rosie’s Reading. Built as our own branch of the Australian edition of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, each enrolled child (birth to five) receives a specially-selected book in the mail. That this has been made possible in our home state is incredible, and I don’t doubt that over the coming years as those children reach school age we will see that it has helped changed the landscape of how our young people and their families think about reading.
This, I suppose, is fundamentally what I feel the need to say: that there is hope. There is an opportunity here for lives to be changed for the better. What has been achieved in England could, and would, translate just as well to Tasmania.
In reading terms, we have spent a lot of our time as mechanics, poking around in engines to ensure we have a tightly-tuned vehicle that works... Progress in this regard is deeply important, and we need to continue to commit to it to see the real results that are possible. But there is a next step, too—a really exciting next step.
It is important that young people can read, but then our next step is to ensure that they do.
We are getting better at building cars.
Let’s teach our kids the fun of the drive.
Lyndon Riggall is a teacher at Cressy District High School and the writer of the picture books Becoming Ellie and Tamar the Thief. Alongside Georgie Todman, he is also co-president of the Tamar Valley Writers Festival. The festival runs from October 15-19th 2026, and this year’s line-up includes guests such as Nigella Lawson, Shaun Micallef and Hannah Kent. More information can be found at: https://www.tamarvalleywritersfestival.com.au/ You can find Lyndon at http://www.lyndonriggall.com or on social media @lyndonriggall.
