Children can move through primary school masking difficulties that later become barriers across subjects
INTERNATIONAL Literacy Day, observed on Sept 8, offers an opportunity each year to reflect on the importance of literacy.
In Malaysia, this is hardly a new conversation. Few would dispute that children need to learn to read well.
What concerns me more is how long some children can remain in school before we recognise that they are struggling.
The recently released Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) 2025 results add urgency to this conversation.
Only 44% of 15-year-olds in Malaysia attained at least Level 2 proficiency in reading, considered the minimum level of proficiency, compared with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 69%.
Pisa cannot tell us when reading difficulties began, but if many students are still struggling with fundamental aspects of reading at 15, we need to pay closer attention to what happens in the earlier years.
Reading difficulties can be surprisingly easy to miss in those years. Teachers explain things verbally. Pictures provide clues. Friends help.
Some children memorise familiar texts, while others become very good at watching what everyone else is doing and following along. They complete the worksheet and eventually move on to the next school year.
The demands of learning change as they get older. By upper primary, a child has to read a mathematics problem before solving it, follow written instructions in science and make sense of increasingly complex texts across subjects.
A child may understand what the teacher is explaining and still struggle because reading itself requires much effort.
This was part of what led us to start Projek BacaBaca in 2021. We work with primary school children who are reading below the level expected for their age through regular one-to-one sessions with trained volunteers and reading materials matched to each child’s ability.
Listening closely as children read reveals difficulties that might otherwise go unnoticed. One child may guess a word from its first letter. Another can pronounce an entire passage fluently but struggle to explain what it means. Some memorise familiar texts and appear to be competent readers until the text changes.
Over time, small changes begin to appear. A child who once looked immediately to an adult when encountering an unfamiliar word attempts to pronounce it independently.
One who read barely above a whisper begins to read with confidence. These moments offer a glimpse of what early, targeted support can make possible.
Working on literacy has also made me think differently about the questions we ask when children fall behind.
Home literacy experiences matter, but families live under very different circumstances. Some parents juggle long working hours and multiple responsibilities. Some are not confident readers themselves, while others want to help but do not know how to respond when their child struggles.
Schools and the wider education system therefore have an important role to play. Screening can help identify when a child is struggling. The more important question is what that particular child needs. More practice at the same level may not address the underlying difficulty.
The cost of waiting grows with each school year. By secondary school, students are expected to extract information from history texts, understand science instructions and interpret questions across subjects.
What begins as an early literacy gap may, over time, become a wider barrier to learning.
This matters as education increasingly focuses on artificial intelligence, digital literacy, creativity and critical thinking. These capabilities place greater demands on students’ ability to read, interpret and evaluate information.
It is difficult to analyse competing claims, judge the reliability of information or engage deeply with complex ideas if reading itself remains difficult.
The conversations prompted by International Literacy Day should continue well beyond Sept 8. We should be asking how early we identify children who struggle and whether the support they receive addresses the difficulties they actually have.
Children continue to move through the school system without a secure reading foundation. Earlier identification gives us a better opportunity to reach them before the gap becomes harder to close.
Hema Letchamanan is a senior lecturer and programme director at the School of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences and Leisure Management, Taylor’s University. She is the founder of Projek BacaBaca, a literacy initiative supporting children in developing foundational literacy skills. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
