Don’t Make Me Go Full Medusa, parent advocate exhaustion energy.

A recent parent post has genuinely stayed with me. She described informing three separate teachers that her child had recently been diagnosed with dyslexia. Three teachers. Not one response reflected a strong understanding of dyslexia, evidence-based literacy instruction, or what that diagnosis should immediately trigger in terms of classroom support and instructional response.

Honestly, that should alarm every single person working in education.

Because we are no longer talking about hidden evidence, niche research or obscure university debates. We are talking about a condition that affects a significant proportion of children in classrooms across Australia, alongside decades of available evidence explaining how children learn to read and what effective intervention looks like.

There comes a point where protecting the comfort of adults starts to look morally indefensible when weighed against the reality of a child who cannot read. And many parents are now at that point.

I am long past worrying about whether contemporary evidence-based literacy instruction makes some adults uncomfortable. Children are uncomfortable every single day in classrooms where they cannot read properly. They are uncomfortable when they are expected to “read” books they cannot decode. They are uncomfortable when they are guessing words from pictures, while other children appear fluent and confident. They are uncomfortable when they are publicly exposed during classroom reading activities. They are uncomfortable when they spend years masking, memorising and compensating while adults reassure parents that everything is “fine”.

Children are also deeply uncomfortable when they do not receive emotional support from the very adults responsible for their well-being. They know when a classroom teacher minimises their distress. They know when a school sees the parent as the problem for raising concerns. They know when a principal avoids accountability because acknowledging the problem would require confronting outdated instructional practice. They know when they are being behaviour-managed instead of genuinely supported.

Children are not stupid. They know when adults have stopped really seeing them. They know that society fails to acknowledge that reading difficulties are present in 1 in 5 people.

And honestly, some adults in education need to sit with that discomfort.

Because the evidence has been available for years.

We now have the Science of Reading, AERO guidance, La Trobe University SOLAR, Ochre Education, researchED, SPELD training, Phonics Plus+ programs, and Think Forward Educators. Structured literacy implementation, explicit teaching reforms, state-wide phonics screening checks, university short courses, literacy research centres, curriculum-aligned decodable texts, cognitive science research, language and reading science, morphology research, MTSS and Response to Intervention frameworks, dyslexia advocacy organisations, evidence-informed instructional coaching, and decades of international evidence explaining how children actually learn to read.

Most importantly, Departments of Education are now intervening directly. The Victorian Department of Education is mandating systematic synthetic phonics and explicit instruction implementation from 2027. The MACS school are preparing for phonics implementation in 2030.

That matters.

Because this is no longer sitting at the fringe of the education debate. This is no longer a small group of parents, researchers or advocates arguing in isolation.

The track has already been laid.

Many schools have spent years preparing for this shift. Many teachers have already retrained. Many systems are already implementing structured literacy and explicit teaching models successfully. Some schools quietly started this transition years ago because they could already see the evidence, the student outcomes and the direction education was heading.

No-one is rolling this back.

The evidence base is too large.

The policy direction is too clear.

The implementation is already happening.

At the same time, parents are more informed than ever before. Parents are attending professional learning, reading policy documents, listening to researchers, accessing webinars, following literacy experts and comparing classroom practice against the evidence themselves.

That changes the landscape completely.

Schools can no longer credibly argue that contemporary evidence-based literacy instruction is inaccessible, unavailable or unknown. The information is public. The training exists. The evidence exists. The implementation models exist.

Yet some classrooms are still relying on Balanced Literacy, three-cueing, predictable texts, BAS assessments, running records, guessing strategies and practices that actively mask reading failure instead of identifying it early.

At some point, continuing to ignore contemporary evidence-based practice stops looking like professional preference and starts looking like professional resistance.

And yes, decodable books make some adults uncomfortable.

Good.

Because decodable books expose the problem. They expose how many children were surviving through guessing and memory instead of reading. They expose how weak some assessment practices really are. They expose how many students looked “on track” while carrying major decoding deficits underneath. They expose the educational damage caused when ideology is prioritised over evidence.

Professor Pamela Snow captured this perfectly when she wrote, “As parents, you buy a lottery ticket when your child starts school.”

That quote still stings because it is still true.

Some children win the literacy lottery and land in classrooms where teachers understand decoding, identify poor literacy skills early and use contemporary evidence-based practice. Others spend years trapped in outdated instructional methods while their confidence quietly collapses.

That is not a functioning education system.

That is educational roulette.

What makes many parents furious is that schools are often documenting the failure without admitting it. Extra time, modified tasks, reduced workload, teacher prompting, heavy scaffolding, reading support, assistive technology and alternative assessments all become part of the evidence trail.

Schools cannot simultaneously build layers of adjustments around a student while pretending there is no literacy problem.

Parents see the contradiction.

Students live the contradiction.

And frankly, I am tired of watching children carry the burden of adult professional defensiveness, institutional inertia and outdated literacy ideology.

No child should leave primary school unable to decode fluently because adults refused to update their practice. No child should spend years believing they are stupid because obvious reading difficulties were ignored, minimised or hidden behind weak assessment systems.

Children only get one chance at early literacy instruction.

Because the child going into secondary school who cannot read matters more than the adult whose feelings are hurt by the evidence.

Heidi Gregory