Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion and I am happy to support the member for Wakefield. I thank the member for Wakefield for bringing this motion to the House. As we were discussing before, it is certainly an issue that is well supported across the chamber on both sides.

I think it is important to reflect that dyslexia in Australia affects roughly 10 per cent of the population and that holds globally as well. So 10 per cent of the people out there in the community whether, as the member for Wakefield said, they recognise it or not, have some form of dyslexia. As we get to know more about dyslexia and understand it better, we can start to treat it and put support services around it.

Dyslexia over the years has not been well identified or managed. It has been, according to the Australian Dyslexia Association, resistant to traditional teaching and regular learning methods, so it is important to ensure that we find new ways of teaching and supporting people who have been identified as having dyslexia.

That is the importance of the Light it Red for Dyslexia initiative. In Brisbane we had the Story Bridge lit up on Saturday in recognition of dyslexia as well as the Q1 SkyPoint Observation Deck on the Gold Coast. The Light it Red for Dyslexia campaign, importantly, is a volunteer initiative to increase dyslexia awareness and, as the member for Wakefield, said, it is a prelaunch to Dyslexia Empowerment Week.

Of that 10 per cent of the population with dyslexia, about half—or five per cent—of those students are known to have a developmental learning disability. Of these students with a learning disability, four out of five have a reading disorder as well as a maths disorder. So it is not just reading; it can also be maths.

The importance of Dyslexia Empowerment Week is that children are encouraged to write a red letter about dyslexia to a politician, a school principal, a teacher, the media or a person they feel has influence in creating change for people with dyslexia. I am looking forward to getting some of those letters—I have not received any yet and I am not sure if anyone else here has. Hopefully, over the next week or so, we will start to see some of those letters come into our offices. It will be interesting to see what those people have to say about their experiences with dyslexia and how we can possibly work with them and help them by passing their thoughts and concerns onto our senior colleagues.

As a government, we recognise that we need to place a high priority on education and providing educational opportunities for students, including those with dyslexia. In that vein, the government is funding some $342,000 in 2016 to enable AUSPELD, the Australian Federation of Specific Learning Difficulties, to produce a resource entitled Understanding learning difficulties: a practical guidethat will be made freely available online to all teachers across the country.

We need to recognise the importance of teachers being properly trained in teaching students with dyslexia. As I have said before, traditional teaching methods do not necessarily work. I was reading a statistic earlier that, in the three years of a Bachelor of Education—training for a teacher—only about five per cent of that time is actually spent on how to teach students with dyslexia, so it is important that we build the skills and training capacity of our teachers to be able to work with those students. That is, in part, what AUSPELD, as a national body, is providing—those additional services for people with dyslexia and other learning difficulties through, importantly, evidence based interventions.

The AUSPELD guide has been designed by experts to provide principals and teachers with a greater awareness and understanding of the significant impact that learning difficulties such as dyslexia can have on children. I think it is a great piece of work, and the government is committed to continuing to support students with those difficulties. I am pleased that the member has brought the motion to the House.

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