The Pirls results from 2016 showed that 78% of Grade 4 children couldn't read in any language. This week we learnt that that number had escalated to 81% in 2021, wiping out a decade of progress.

Tuesday this week was one of the most frustrating days of my life. As the Shadow Minister of Basic Education, I am used to listening to long presentations by the minister and the director-general telling us all the wonderful things they are doing in education.

But Tuesday was different. They were releasing the results of the latest round of an international reading assessment, the Progress in International Reading Literacy (Pirls). You see the thing with surveys of achievement is that they don't care what you say you've done, they just measure what children actually know, and what they revealed was devastating.

Even before Covid-19 we knew we had a reading crisis. The previous Pirls results from 2016 showed that 78% of Grade 4 children couldn't read in any language despite being in school for four years -- about 800 days of schooling.

On Tuesday we learnt that that number had escalated to 81% of Grade 4s that could not read in any language in 2021, taking us back to 2011 levels of achievement and wiping out a decade of progress.

It is also very concerning that 56% of Grade 6s can't read for meaning at a Grade 4 level.

It's...