WHY CAN’T MY CHILD READ?
Before we can answer the question, why can’t my child read. It’s important to understand your child’s reading journey. A key place to start is this: when and how was your child taught to read?
In New Zealand, the early years of school (typically Years 1–3) are when children are expected to learn the foundations of reading. From Term 1, 2025, structured literacy was mandated for all schools in New Zealand, meaning reading is now expected to be taught using an explicit, systematic, and evidence-based approach. Ask yourself:
- Did your child learn to read in their early years of school before 2025?
- Did your child start school from Term 1, 2025 onwards, and are they being taught using this new approach?
- Or was your child’s school already using a Structured Literacy approach prior to 2025?
These differences matter, because they change how we understand your child’s reading difficulties.
For many older children (year 4 and above normally) already in the system, or for those in schools that had not yet shifted their practice, reading was often taught using an approach commonly referred to as balanced literacy. For these children, this document helps explain why reading and spelling may have been difficult, and this information remains highly relevant.
For children learning through a structured literacy approach in the early years (Years 1–3), reading is taught explicitly, systematically, and guided by a clear scope and sequence. If difficulties occur in this context, the reasons may look different and need to be understood through a different lens.
One of the most important things to remember is this: reading difficulties are often about instruction, not ability.
From here, your next step will depend on your child’s reading journey. If your child was taught to read before 2025, continue reading this page. If your child is learning to read through structured literacy from 2025 onwards or your school has been using Structured Literacy before 2025, please see why my child can’t read, when the school is using a structured literacy approach for reading in the early years. (still to come)
Was this my fault?
• No, it was not your fault and it was NOT your child’s fault.
• It was not because you did not or had not read enough to your child.
• It was not because you let your child have a night off from reading their book.
• It was not because you were not trying hard enough.
• It was also not because they were not trying hard enough.
• It was not because they were “a busy child who would catch up” — they would not have without the proper help and intervention.
Is reading a natural process? Are we born knowing how to read?
No. Reading is not a natural process, and our brains are not wired to learn to read when we are born. Learning to read is something we need to be taught.
Humans are naturally wired to develop oral language. Most children learn to speak and understand through everyday interaction, listening, and being part of conversations. This is our biologically primary language system.
Reading, however, is biologically secondary language system. It is a learned skill that builds on oral language, but it does not develop on its own.
This is why how reading is taught matters so much, and why there has been a shift towards more explicit, structured approaches to teaching reading.
For those who want to learn more please watch, Dr Pamela Snow discussing this in more detail here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W73WMTIYJ7I&t=80s
Why could my child speak so well, but had trouble learning to read?
Reading specialist Margie Gillis answers this question well in this video
What approach to reading did New Zealand school’s use ?
As outlined at the top of this page, the approach to teaching reading in New Zealand has recently changed.
Before 2025, most schools used approaches commonly referred to as balanced literacy, also known as the three cueing system or MSV (Meaning, Structure, Visual). This was the approach widely used across schools and taught in teacher training.
From Term 1, 2025, structured literacy is now mandated for all schools
What is Balanced Literacy?
In New Zealand, (before 2025) most schools used what was called a Balanced Literacy approach, which was based on a theory and ideology. There was no research or evidence to prove that this approach was effective in teaching reading. A typical Balanced Literacy framework consisted of five components, including read aloud, guided reading, shared reading, independent reading, and word study. Important foundational skills such as phonemic awareness, decoding, and encoding were not explicitly taught, even for beginners or struggling readers.
A Balanced Literacy approach used ‘instructional reading groups’ or ‘instructional writing’. This meant that considerable classroom time was spent with children working independently on reading and writing tasks of their own choosing. Teachers did supervise this work and spent time discussing it with individual children. However, the way instruction was organised meant that time for teacher-led, explicit instruction was minimal at best. The term ‘child-led’ was also commonly used to describe this approach.
Balanced Literacy also used running records to assess how well a child was learning to read. Alison Clarke from Spelfabet explained why running records were not the most effective way to assess reading in her blog, Running Records are an Uninformative Waste of Teacher Time. ‘Running Records are an uninformative waste of teacher time‘.
How would I know if my child was taught Balanced Literacy in school?
This could be clearly identified by examining the books that children brought home from school. A typical reading lesson in New Zealand would have included levelled or predictable texts. In New Zealand, these were referred to as PM Readers and standard Ready to Read books (not phonics-plus books), and children were grouped into levels by colour using the colour wheel. These texts often used many words that struggling readers could not read, with pictures that encouraged guessing.
For instance, a predictable text a child might have brought home would have included sentences such as:
• William found his lunch.
• William found his crayons.
• William found his backpack.
These were accompanied by pictures of William getting his ‘lunch’, ‘crayons’, and ‘backpack’. With words spelled using varied and relatively complex phonics patterns, and pictures that enabled guessing, this type of text did not encourage children to look carefully at the letters in words to decode (read) them.
Instead, the child was memorising the words, and this was often noticeable when they read the book. They often didn’t even look at the words they were meant to be ‘reading’; instead, they were preparing to turn the page or looking at the picture. Teachers would often encourage the child by saying, “Well done, good reading.” This created poor habits and gave a false impression of how we learn to read.
Image taken from Reading Rockets
There was no clear order or rationale for why these words were introduced to a child, other than for memorisation. This was not reading.
When we looked closely at the words on the pages above, remembering these were the books being sent home daily, we could immediately see examples such as the double /ee/ vowel in the word ‘see’, the ‘k’ sound spelled /ck/ in ‘duck’, and the /l/u/ll/ pattern in ‘doll’. The ‘k’ sound followed a spelling rule for when to use /ck/ versus /k/, and the /l/u/ll/ pattern followed the Floss rule, which explains when to double the /l/.
This raised an important question: how could we expect a child who had just started school to read these words if they had not been taught the sounds or rules of the alphabetic code?
Unfortunately, in New Zealand, this was often addressed by teaching strategies such as:
• Did it sound right? (encouraged guessing)
• Did it look right? (encouraged guessing)
• Did it make sense? (encouraged guessing)
• Look at the picture (not the words, encouraged guessing)
• Skip the word and read to the end of the sentence to work it out (encouraged guessing)
• What is the first sound of the word? (instead of fully sounding out the word)
Children were encouraged to use the “three cueing system,” which promoted guessing based on semantics (context clues, pictures, background knowledge), syntax (language patterns), and graphophonic cues (partial attention to letters and sounds). This approach was also known in New Zealand as Balanced Literacy or MSV (meaning, structure, and visual).
Image sourced from Reading Rockets
The scary part was that many teachers were trained to believe that small errors, such as reading ‘house’ instead of ‘home’ or ‘horse’ instead of ‘pony’ or using ‘a’ for ‘the’ or ‘this’ for ‘that’ could be ignored, because they did not greatly alter meaning.
Note: As of April 2025, initial teacher training in New Zealand continues to include the Balanced Literacy approach, as this has not yet been formally changed. Each university or training provider determines its own course content, meaning there is variability in what is taught during teacher education. Evidence also indicates that this approach is still being taught in some universities, although it is hoped that this will change over time as training programmes are reviewed and updated.
RED FLAG – If a child struggled with reading, whether it was called dyslexia or another learning difficulty, they almost always had challenges with working memory. This meant they could not hold words in their memory long enough to memorise them, no matter how hard they tried.
The second indicator that helped determine whether a child was being taught using a Balanced Literacy approach was the type of phonics being taught in the classroom. A frequent response from schools using a Balanced Literacy approach was, “But we do teach phonics!” This was generally true; however, there were two types of phonics: Systematic Synthetic Phonics and Analytic Phonics. It was important to understand the difference. The following table showed the distinction:
The main issues with phonics programmes that were not based on systematic synthetic phonics were:
- They did not focus on decoding (putting sounds together to read words) or encoding (pulling sounds apart to spell words).
- They did not teach all 44 sounds of the English language.
The programme was designed to work alongside a Balanced Literacy approach using predictable texts; it was an add-on. - The programme did not follow a systematic and cumulative scope and sequence.
Children were taught phonics patterns or sounds in isolation, and the spelling words did not reflect the sound or pattern that had been taught. - There were no decodable books or writing tasks to support learning or to review the sound or pattern that had been taught.
This table reflected the differences in phonics instruction between Structured Literacy, which used an evidence-based systematic synthetic phonics approach, and a Balanced Literacy approach using an analytic phonics programme.
Image taken from the International Dyslexia Association website.
The final way to understand whether a child was being taught using a Balanced Literacy approach was to look at their spelling words. If they were given a random list of words to memorise by Friday and used the Look, Cover, Write, Check strategy, this reflected a Balanced Literacy approach:
- Look at the word.
- Cover the word with a piece of paper or their hand.
- Write the spelling word again next to the original word.
- Uncover the word to check if it had been written correctly.
This was not teaching spelling; it was teaching children to memorise whole words using a Balanced Literacy approach.
RED FLAG – Children with poor working memory were often unable to achieve this and would have had the same words week after week.
Why did some children learn to read using Balanced Literacy?
This was a great question and has caused, and continues to cause, many debates. In fact, this was what the Reading Wars were about, but we won’t go into that here, as the scientific evidence is now clear.
Research known as the Science of Reading has shown us how the brain learns to read, and research from the Science of Learning has shown how best to teach. MRI scans have given us the ability to observe what is happening in the brain when we read.
As reported in Hempenstall, K. (2016), Read about it: Scientific evidence for effective teaching of reading, Reid Lyon reported that research found:
Approximately 40% of children learn to read relatively easily with minimal instruction. These are the children who are often successful under a Balanced Literacy approach. Around 30–40% of children need significant support to make progress in reading. These are the children who struggle and can manage for several years until difficulties become more apparent around Years 3 or 4; they usually improve more rapidly when provided with evidence-based intervention. For 20–30% of children, reading is a highly challenging task that requires explicit, systematic, cumulative, diagnostic, and code-based instruction. These children must be taught using an evidence-based approach to reading.
Useful links
https://pamelasnow.blogspot.com/2024/04/refocusing-biologically-primary-vs.html?
https://pamelasnow.blogspot.com/2023/06/learning-to-read-is-not-childs-play.html
Read About It: Scientific evidence for effective teaching of reading
This document was created by Sharon Scurr, founder of the Dyslexia Evidence-Based Group (DEB), in December 2021.
It was updated by Sharon Scurr to reflect the move to a Structured Literacy approach in all schools from Term 1, 2025.