New to this topic? Start with our companion article: The Simple View of Reading: How Children Learn to Read | Brisbane Speech Pathologist
If you've read our companion article on the Simple View of Reading, you'll know the framework: reading comprehension = decoding × language comprehension. This article zooms out from the theory and asks a different question — where does the SVR actually show up in Australian classrooms, curriculum documents, and policy? And what does that mean for your child's school experience?
The Australian Curriculum and Reading
The Australian Curriculum (developed by ACARA — the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) has always included both sides of the reading equation, even if it hasn't always used the SVR label.
The English curriculum is organised around three strands: Language, Literature, and Literacy. Within these strands, you'll find expectations that map neatly onto the SVR:
- Decoding skills appear in the curriculum's focus on phonics, phonological awareness, word reading, and fluency — particularly in the Foundation to Year 2 years.
- Language comprehension skills show up in the curriculum's emphasis on vocabulary, grammar, text structure, comprehension strategies, and critical thinking about texts.
The curriculum recognises that children need both — they need to be able to read the words, and they need to understand what those words mean in context. As children move through primary school, the balance shifts. The early years have a strong emphasis on cracking the code, while the upper primary years increasingly ask children to analyse, interpret, and think critically about what they read.
The Shift Toward Structured Literacy
Over the past few years, there's been a significant shift in Australian education toward what's often called structured literacy or the science of reading. This movement is grounded in decades of research — including the SVR — about how children actually learn to read.
In practical terms, this has meant:
- A stronger emphasis on systematic, explicit phonics instruction in the early years
- Greater recognition that many children need direct teaching of reading skills, not just exposure to books
- A move away from approaches that relied heavily on guessing words from pictures or context, toward approaches that build strong decoding foundations
Several Australian states have updated their literacy policies to reflect this shift. The Five from Five project, an Australian initiative supported by MultiLit, has been an important resource for educators and families, providing evidence-based guidance on the five key components of effective reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension (Five from Five, 2024).
This is good news for children, because it means Australian schools are increasingly aligning their teaching with what the research tells us works. A strong, systematic approach to phonics can transform a child's decoding — but decoding alone isn't enough. The science of reading encompasses both sides of the SVR: decoding and language comprehension.
The Gap Australian Schools Still Need to Close
Here's where Australian schools still have work to do. Even with the shift toward systematic phonics, some children are slipping through — not because they can't decode, but because their language comprehension hasn't been explicitly developed. These are the children who "sound like" good readers in Year 2 but suddenly hit a wall in Year 4, when the texts get denser and the vocabulary gets harder. (Our companion article unpacks this "strong decoding, weak comprehension" profile in more detail.)
Snow (2021) has argued strongly that Australian schools must attend to both pillars of the SVR if every child is going to become a proficient reader. In my own years of school-based work, the children who worry me most aren't the ones struggling with phonics — they're the Year 4s who decode beautifully but can't tell you what they just read. Speech pathologists are well placed to help tease apart which struggling readers have a language comprehension bottleneck versus a decoding one — and to point families and teachers toward the kind of support that actually matches the profile. That's the area that's often still underdone relative to phonics.
If your child is finding reading hard and you're not sure which side of the equation is the problem, that's exactly the kind of thing an assessment can help clarify.
Questions Worth Asking Your Child's School
If you want to check whether your child's school is taking a balanced, SVR-aligned approach, here are some useful questions to raise at parent-teacher interviews or information nights:
- On the decoding side: Is phonics being taught systematically, explicitly, and in a sound-first way? Are the books children bring home matched to the spellings they've been taught (decodable), rather than asking them to guess from pictures?
- On the language comprehension side: How is the school building vocabulary, oral language, and inferencing? Are children getting exposure to rich texts read aloud, and structured conversation about what those texts mean?
- On assessment: If a child is struggling, does the school look at both decoding and language comprehension to work out which side is causing the trouble?
Schools doing this well will be able to answer clearly. Schools still in transition may give vaguer answers — that's useful information too, because it tells you where you might need to top things up at home.
For practical home strategies on the decoding side, see our phonological awareness activities and phonics and early reading articles. For the comprehension side, our pieces on tier two vocabulary and narrative skills are good starting points.
The Big Picture
The Simple View of Reading gives us a clear, research-backed framework for understanding what reading requires — and Australia's education system is increasingly embracing this framework. Schools are getting better at teaching decoding through structured literacy approaches, and that's a fantastic step forward.
But we need to make sure we don't forget the other half of the equation. Language comprehension is just as important as decoding, and for some children, it's the part that needs the most support. That's where speech pathologists come in — and where you, as a parent, can make an enormous difference through the conversations you have and the stories you share.
Alexandra Bouwmeester is a Senior Speech Pathologist (MSPA, CPSP) and certified Sounds-Write clinician with over 14 years' experience supporting children's literacy. She offers mobile speech pathology to families across Brisbane's south side and Logan.
If you're wondering whether your child's reading difficulties might have a language comprehension component, we'd love to talk it through with you. Get in touch with Speaking Speech Pathology — we assess both sides of the reading equation and help you understand exactly where your child needs support.
References
- Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5–51.
- Snow, P. C. (2021). SOLAR: The Science of Language and Reading. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 37(3), 222–233.
- Queensland Department of Education. (n.d.). Reading and Writing Centre.
