Wollongong walkers share strong views on our youngsters' literacy skills

In fact, the majority of people the Illawarra Mercury spoke with at Belmore Basin on Monday had strong views on the news that a third of Australian students cannot read proficiently.

The report from the Grattan Institute, released on Sunday, revealed over the past 10 years reading performances have "stagnated", according to NAPLAN results and the cost to the Australian economy could be worth over $40 billion.

The report recommends the government and school sector commit to a 10-year "reading guarantee" that would target 90 per cent of students being proficient in reading.

They say students are taught differently across the country and a unified, structured literacy approach would be more appropriate.

The report also finds that while disadvantaged students are struggling more students who come from an advantaged background are also falling behind.

Former teacher Jennifer Anne Bayly says the curriculum change led to her leaving teaching.

"Teachers need to return to teaching via learning theory," Ms Bayly said.

"When you look at the curriculum, learning theory seems to have been thrown out the door and we are just using this system or that system or some other system and there's no continuum use of learning theory."

Amber Buckmaster is a teacher who believes intervention is needed early and data should be used to help students.

"I think it's important that we look at every student as an individual learner and we identify what they need to be able to succeed because what every student needs to be able to succeed looks different," Ms Buckmaster said.

Kim Di Leva thinks teachers should return to teaching through phonics, which was a recommendation of the Grattan report.

"Go back to phonics, because seriously half of them can't read. I mean guess the word, doesn't work.

"Anyway my opinion I learnt in phonics and it seemed to work," Ms Di Leva said.

Phillip Wall believes the curriculum is full of unnecessary subjects.

"Maybe the teachers need to change their mode of teaching," Mr Wall said.

"We used to have a million years ago ... we just had arithmetic, maths, science none of the ancillary bits and pieces they have nowadays."

Gillian Burton, a mother of pre-school children, says children need to be exposed to literacy as young as possible through community-led events.

"We go to a lot of events at the library. There are some really great resources that all families have access to," Ms Burton said.

"It's a really big topic - there's a lot of factors that can influence how well someone reads including their background; if they're getting help at home ... it's definitely not a one-step approach its a multi-faceted approach.

"It's not just on the teachers or parents, to get that really early exposure to books ...

"My daughter, she loves to read so, she wants to start reading now and she's only three."

Ed Micallef also is of the belief that exposure to more literacy would help.

"One way of overcoming it of course is to try and get the child read every night before they go to bed, to pronounce the words themselves if they can with as little help as possible from the parents.

"I guess teachers need to be maybe re-educated on how to take up that challenge," Mr Micallef said.