Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham announced this week that an expert group of principals, teachers, speech specialists, academics and researchers would progress the staged implementation of a nationwide phonics assessment and the development of a numeracy check.

It followed three significant national and international reports in 2016 that showed Australia’s education performance was “at best plateauing and at worst declining”.

Speech Pathology Tasmania’s Rosalie Martin said phonics reading was extremely important for children to learn decoding skills in language.

“Phonics is the ability to make a link between the sounds we hear in spoken language and the letters on the pages. Children need to get that link between sound and letters.”

She said screening children was essential.

“Screening really matters. It tells us how a child is going, and this can help us understand what they need.

“What we want to see as a result of this is those kids that need extra help, catching up, because we then know what they need.

“It will give those children a good jump start.”

Ms Martin said, at the moment, the education system was not managing to close the gap between students who were thriving at school and children who were struggling.

“Something needs to be done.

“This phonics check for grade 1 students will allow for early intervention by teaching relevant skills to students who need it.

“We want the information gathered to then feed back into pre-teacher training.

"It’s about providing teachers with the knowledge and ability to teach phonics with consistency and quality across Australian schools.”

The expert panel tasked with implementing the checks will report back to the Education Council in mid-2017.

“It’s important to identify if a child is not learning to read effectively, because then you can intervene and fix the problem,” Mr Birmingham said.

“The evidence indicates that once a child reaches the age of eight there are enormous challenges to turning that around and the learning gap only blows out further.”