What is NALP?
The National Accelerated Literacy Program (NALP) aims to remove the educational divide faced by students who can’t read.
The program uses Accelerated Literacy methodology (AL) to tackle low literacy levels in remote communities around Australia, particularly Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. In addition, NALP is delivered in schools in northern Western Australia, South Australia and one school in Queensland.
The program is jointly funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) and the Northern Territory Government, through the Department of Education and Training (DET).
Background
NALP adopts an applied intervention, originally known as Scaffolding Literacy™, which was developed by Dr Brian Gray and Ms Wendy Cowey at the University of Canberra. Scaffolding Literacy™ built on Dr Gray’s earlier work on "Concentrated Language Encounters" at Traeger Park School in Alice Springs and the work of others at the University of Canberra.
Dr Gray and Ms Cowey ran a pilot program across 30 schools in five States and Territories between 1998 and 2003. The pilot resulted in significant improvements in the literacy of Indigenous students.
NALP was established in 2004 to take the Accelerated Literacy methodology from the pilot stage to a program for meeting the literacy needs of Indigenous students in the Northern Territory over four years to 2008.