Literacy
Systematic Synthetic Phonics
In June 2024, the Department of Education announced that all Victorian public-school students in Years Prep to 2 will be taught reading using a systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) approach. This mandates a minimum of 25 minutes of explicit phonics instruction each day, focusing on teaching the relationships between sounds (phonemes) and letter symbols (graphemes) to build reading and writing skills. The change is based on extensive research and aims to improve student reading fluency and accuracy.
Key details of the announcement
Target group: All students in Years Prep to 2 in Victorian public schools.
Method: A systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) approach.
Instruction time: A minimum of 25 minutes of explicit phonics teaching daily.
Learning focus: Children will learn to decode words by blending individual letter sounds (phonemes) together and will also learn to spell by breaking words down into sounds (segmenting).
Rationale: The approach is evidence-based and is designed to help students become strong and independent readers by building fluency and confidence through a structured and logical sequence.
At Beaumaris North Primary School we decided to adopt the Phonics Plus program provided by the Department of Education. Phonics Plus is a comprehensive, systematic synthetic phonics program designed for early literacy instruction, typically for Prep to Year 2 students.
It provides schools with structured, daily lesson plans that cover a full scope and sequence for learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (letters and sounds). The program integrates other key literacy skills, including handwriting, fluency, spelling, morphology, and high-frequency words, to build foundational reading and writing abilities.
Our prep students have been following the Phonics Plus lesson plans this year with great success. Our early years staff will be undertaking further professional development to completely launch the Phonics Plus program in year Prep to Year 2 at the beginning of 2026. We look forward to taking you on this journey with us.
Please find attached a valuable resource produced by the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership that provides valuable information regarding understanding phonics and suggested activities you can do at home with your children.
