On Liberty EP94 | Pamela Snow | Early Literacy Important For Later Success

Glenn Fahey speaks with Professor Pamela Snow to discuss the correlation between poor literacy education and later disadvantage in life. Professor Snow has undertaken extensive research into how people end up in the youth justice, out-of-home care systems and factors leading to non-participation in mainstream education.

Currently, 30-40% of students aren’t meeting minimum literacy benchmarks, the task is to ensure every teacher in every classroom in the country teaching K-2 has access to the best knowledge and practice on how to teach literacy. Disadvantaged young people who don’t get good early literacy opportunities fall out early from mainstream education because they are not coping. Her research uncovered alarmingly high levels of unidentified oral language difficulties and high rates of very low literacy in these prisons and out-of-home.