The Literacy Improvement Iceberg™

Why your school is working so hard on literacy — but not yet seeing the impact on student outcomes

Schools are working incredibly hard to improve literacy for students.

Leaders are managing full calendars, competing priorities, compliance demands, staff fatigue, intervention needs, student behaviour, assessment data, end of semester reporting, student disengagement and behaviour and the constant pressure to lift outcomes.

Teachers are exhausted trying to do the right thing. They are looking for clarity, direction and guidance on Facebook groups. They want to know what matters most, how to fit it all in in the literacy block, what the Dibels data and writing samples is telling them and what to do with the data- especially for the students who are struggling with reading and writing.

But in many schools, literacy improvement is still being approached through the things we can see: a program, a resource, a routine, a slide deck, an assessment schedule or an intervention group.

When these are evidence informed, these things matter, but they are not the whole issue. The issue is often underneath the surface.

Leadership clarity, direction and expectations- that is distributive. A high impact MTSS approach that is embedded, documented and measured in terms of impact. A high trust culture schoolwide with strong positive relationships. High expectations for every student- that is lived in questioning, content, grouping, feedback, dosage and rigour. Shared instructional expectations. Strong relationships with every student known well. Assessment and analysis routines that are mapped out and streamlined across the year. Decision-making pathways. Staff meeting and PLC architecture that is focused on improvement cycles of measurable impact. A clear improvement pathway. A system that reduces cognitive overwhelm rather than adding to it. 

This is why schoolwide excellence cannot be bolted on. It has to be built.

The Literacy Improvement Iceberg™ helps school leaders step back from the busyness of the hectic school ecosystem and identify the issue/s underneath the issue, so they can see where the system may be leaking impact and what needs to be strengthened next.

In this session, you will:

• Understand why effort at the surface rarely creates sustained literacy improvement.

• Identify the deeper layers identify the visible and invisible layers that allow effective teaching, learning, assessment, intervention and implementation, with improved student outcomes, to hold over time.

• Learn the common misconceptions that cause literacy improvement to stall.

• Explore the architectural components of school wide instructional excellence.

• Complete a practical School Improvement Heat Map based on your own school context.

• Learn how the Architecture for School Excellence™ and the Implementation Pathway™ support sustainable school improvement.

• Leave with one to three high-impact priorities for your next stage of improvement.

This webinar is for:

• Principals

• Deputy Principals

• Assistant Principals

• Literacy Leaders

• Instructional Leaders

• Middle Leaders

• School Improvement Teams

• Aspiring Leaders who are a ‘champion’ in their school 

It will be especially relevant if your school is:

• working incredibly hard but not yet seeing the literacy growth you expected

• seeing too much inconsistency across classrooms or year levels

• concerned about the number of students needing intervention

• trying to strengthen Tier 1 instruction and what clarity on the highest leverage aspects

• wanting greater alignment across literacy, curriculum, assessment and intervention

• collecting data but still needing clearer guidance about what to do next

• trying to move from pockets of strong practice to a consistent schoolwide approach

• ready to move beyond isolated initiatives

• wanting a clearer and more practical pathway for sustainable improvement

Why this matters

Literacy improvement is not sustained by one program, one professional learning day, one assessment schedule or one committed leader carrying the work. It is also not sustained when school leaders and teachers are feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.

It is sustained when the architecture underneath the work is strong enough to hold it.

When leaders are clear, teachers are supported, expectations are shared, data is understood, implementation is sequenced and everyone can see what is being built, school improvement becomes less dependent on individual effort and more embedded in the way the school works.

That is when literacy improvement starts to shift.

Date and time

Wednesday 1st July 2026

10:00am-11:30am WST

Live online (A recording will be provided to view within one week)

What School Leaders Say

“Thank you for all your work supporting us this year. I recently sat with our ASIP Team and looked over our goals that we set at the start of the year and we have smashed them! Feeling very grateful for all the knowledge you've shared with me and our school.”

— Michelle Moodie, Deputy Principal, Woodroffe Primary School, Darwin

About Julie Scali and Literacy Impact™

Julie Scali is the founder of Literacy Impact™, author of High Impact Reading Instruction and Intervention in the Primary Years, and a national literacy and school improvement consultant.

Her work brings together more than 27 years of experience across classroom teaching, learning difficulties, inclusion, instructional leadership, schoolwide improvement and implementation.

Julie has worked as a primary classroom teacher in Australia and the UK, teaching students from Foundation to Year 7. She has taught in a specialist learning needs unit in London, completed postgraduate study in learning difficulties, and worked as a SENCO for four years, leading schoolwide inclusion and support systems.

Julie also worked at a statewide level in Western Australia as a Support Teacher Learning Difficulties with the Centre for Inclusive Schooling, now SSEN:D, supporting principals and deputy principals to strengthen multi-tiered systems of support in literacy and numeracy.

She then spent eight years as a Deputy Principal across two schools, leading literacy improvement, intervention, teacher development and whole-school instructional change.

Julie is a recipient of a Learning Difficulties Australia award for effective literacy practice, recognising her contribution to improving literacy outcomes for students.

Through Literacy Impact™, Julie now works with schools across Australia to help leadership teams move from fragmented literacy effort to coherent, evidence-informed and codified whole-school systems.

Her work brings together literacy research, implementation science, learning difficulty expertise, instructional leadership and the practical reality of leading change in real schools.

Julie’s point of difference is that she does not just talk about schoolwide literacy improvement. She has led it, supported it, codified it and has the evidence of her impact in terms of student data as a direct result of her effective support of schools across multiple schools and systems.