Federal Minister David Kemp threatens to withhold funding from schools that do not participate in literacy tests. As said in earlier articles, instead of focusing on literacy, it makes more sense for children to become fluent in spoken language.
Children grow up with the predominantly visual languages of TV, video and computergames.
Even more important in future will be fluency in the non-verbal languages of multimedia. The literacy debate is primarily a debate about how government funds should be spent. As such, the debate is about more than just literacy, and touches areas such as taxation. The Australian Government is currently looking at changing the taxation system. In these submissions, Quintessence warns that the current Australian Government's plans on tax and on education are not likely to prepare Australia for the bright future as claimed.