650+ Schools. One Small Nation. A Literacy Revolution.
In Fiji, Get Reading Right isn’t just used in a handful of classrooms. It’s being rolled out across the entire government primary school system as part of a national strategy to transform how children learn to read.
The Story
Fiji is a nation of islands — over 300 of them[1][2] — with around 700 government primary schools spread across a geography that makes centralised teacher training and resource distribution genuinely challenging. For years, the Ministry of Education has been working to improve literacy outcomes for Fijian children, many of whom are learning to read in English as their second or third language after Fijian or Hindi.
Get Reading Right was introduced through a partnership with the Fiji Ministry of Education. The program’s structured, systematic approach was ideally suited to the challenge: it doesn’t rely on teachers having deep specialist knowledge of phonics theory. Instead, it gives every teacher — whether in a well-resourced school in Suva or a small village school on a remote island — a clear, step-by-step program to follow.
Today, more than 650 Fijian government primary schools are using Get Reading Right. That’s not a pilot program or a small trial — it’s a national rollout that puts systematic synthetic phonics at the centre of early literacy instruction across the country.
Why It Matters
When children can read, everything changes. They can access the rest of the curriculum. They can learn independently. They have a genuine pathway to further education and economic opportunity. In a developing Pacific nation, improving literacy outcomes at scale isn’t just an educational goal — it’s an investment in the future of the country.
For us, the Fiji partnership represents something we’re deeply proud of. It demonstrates that our resources work — not just in well-resourced Australian schools, but in some of the most challenging educational environments in the world. If systematic synthetic phonics can transform outcomes for children learning to read in English as a second language on a remote Pacific island, it can work anywhere.
What We’ve Learned
Working at national scale in Fiji has reinforced what we’ve always believed: that structured synthetic phonics is the most effective and equitable way to teach children to read. It doesn’t depend on a child’s home language, their parents’ education level, or whether their school has a library full of books. It just works — one sound at a time, one skill building on the next.
That’s the same philosophy behind everything we do, whether it’s supporting a single teacher in a Sydney school or helping an entire nation teach its children to read.
Want to learn more? If you’re interested in how Get Reading Right can support a school system, district, or large-scale implementation, get in touch. We have the experience and the resources to help at any scale.