“I think this is probably one of the biggest system change issues,” Goldfeld said. “However, the level of difficulty will depend on the school leadership and its openness to do these sorts of things.”

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The Murdoch institute’s Getting it Right from the Start project involved 16 government and Catholic schools which had reported poor results in oral language and literacy among grade 2 students.

The research, to be released on Tuesday, found the greater a school’s readiness for change, the better a program was implemented. But Goldfeld said how well resourced a school was and its ability to work towards longer timeframes also played a part.

“It takes two to three years for a school to get up to speed. That’s the kind of time period you really need to give yourself, there’s no magic wand,” she said.

While the introduction of structured phonics from next year would likely be evident in prep to grade 2 classrooms, Goldfeld said schools would not see that improvement documented until those students completed their first NAPLAN assessment in grade 3.

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Dr Jenny Donovan from the Australian Education Research Organisation said the research results underscored the need for schools to have systems in place which gave staff and the school community clarity, time and resources.

“Using evidence-based practices such as explicit teaching of phonics in reading instruction is obviously very important, but implementation of change is complex and must be undertaken carefully to ensure success,” she said.

Donovan said it was important schools limited the number of changes it made to a manageable level.

“If, like in Victoria where [the government] has said, ‘We’re going to focus on everybody moving to a synthetic teaching approach to the teaching of reading and an explicit teaching approach in general’, that’s one very big change.

“What you wouldn’t want to do at the same time is decide that you’re going to install a new technology system.”

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