Finally, sense and sensibility are gradually being restored to classroom education. The focus of educational authorities and system managers is again firmly fixed on the benefits to students and teachers of direct instruction and explicit teaching.  

It is a case of ‘again’ because this methodology and  the phonetic  approach – word recognition and reading – were the primary practices in our classrooms until the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In the interests of change and dodgy experimentation and to make teaching more exciting, we explored alternative teaching and learning models. They may have seemed exciting and ‘different’, but they focussed on more trivial and less effective teaching and learning practices. Both teaching effectiveness and educational outcomes have suffered.

I rejoice in education returning to the best and most effective practices of the past.  May they never again be abandoned.