The problem with early childhood reading: "The goals are below those of other systems."

Barcelona"We need the curriculum to tell teachers how to detect if a student will have reading problems." This warning from school principal Francesc Martín, which may seem obvious, is one of the main obstacles to improving reading comprehension results in Catalonia. This is the conclusion of the study. Reading comprehension: the pending subject, presented this Monday by the Bofill Foundation.

The research led by Anna Llauradó, PhD in linguistics and secondary school teacher, identifies some of the main shortcomings of the Catalan education system – especially in the pre-school stage – that may explain the reading comprehension problems experienced by Catalan students and that have been highlighted in assessments such as international tests. Catalonia obtained the worst results in the State, only ahead of Ceuta and Melilla.

However, the study also puts ambitious solutions on the table, with a proposed agenda to bring Catalan reading comprehension levels up to par with European standards in just six years and with an investment of €27 million (0.4% of the education budget).

One of the areas Llauradó insists needs to be addressed is the preschool curriculum, which covers ages three to six, the key age for learning to read. The doctor in linguistics compared the Catalan curriculum with that of other countries, such as the United States and Asturias, the autonomous community that obtained the best results in the PIRLS, and detected a significant difference: the Catalan curriculum is "lax" and "not very specific." "We have an unambitious reading curriculum, which sets objectives below those of other educational systems and doesn't even specify the skills a student must achieve to learn to read," says Llauradó.

She also warns that, despite the curriculum specifications made by the Department of Education in the wake of the PISA test disaster, the curriculum continues to "leave learning in the hands of absolute trust in initial teacher training, when we know it has significant shortcomings."

These curriculum shortcomings, when applied to the classroom, lead to a situation of disorientation for teachers. "We need a curriculum that gives us more clues to know if that child is learning to read," says Martín, a teacher and principal at the Sant Jordi School in Vilanova i la Geltrú. He explains that the Department of Education's guidelines do not detail "what phonological level a five-year-old student should have, or what vocabulary they should know by the age of six." He insists that a much higher level of specificity is needed: "Support is necessary, but also materials. Not just telling you that they should learn vocabulary, but there should be a list of what words they should know at that age, which letter they can read best with, or which activities are more useful than others."

Beyond the curriculum, Llauradó's research also points to aspects such as the lack of early detection, which warns that it should not be based so much on universal screening as on, perhaps, conducting follow-up tests on reading skills years before the first basic skills tests, which do not reach the final exam. Furthermore, it also warns of the lack of school libraries and librarians in educational centers.

Can it be solved in just 6 years?

The authors of the study, as well as the director of the Bofill Foundation, assert that the poor reading comprehension situation can be addressed in just six years if systematic measures are taken. "So far, it's not that we've made many plans that haven't worked, but rather that we haven't made any plans. We've only conducted political simulations," Palacín stated. For this reason, the Bofill Foundation proposes seven measures that, if applied widely, could increase scores by 20 points on the PIRLS tests (the equivalent of half a school year) in six years.