Matthew Kelly Education Reporter; 24 March 2006; The Newcastle Herald

EDUCATION authorities are not interested but Diane Philipson's success helping students who have not been able to learn to read in school speaks for itself. 
Over the past five years, the former teacher has been sought out by parents who have lost faith in the capacity of education systems to teach their children to read. 
One parent spent $6000 on a psychologist trying to find out why their child could not read before hearing about Ms Philipson's method by word of mouth. 
Students come from the public and private systems and all social and economic backgrounds. 
Ms Philipson, who spent 40 years as a teacher, said she was not in it for the money. 
" I often teach it for nothing if they can't afford it," she said. 
"One boy told his mother he would rather be dead because he couldn't read. 
"It's a dreadful situation when things get to that stage." 
Last year's national inquiry into literacy found that 30 per cent of children left school functionally illiterate. It also found that most teachers lacked the skills needed to teach children to read. 
Since Ms Philipson began tutoring, children and adults have learned to read using her method. 
She teaches it from her home at Mayfield. 
"They [schools] just expect kids to pick it [reading] up," she said. 
Her speech-based system teaches children to transcribe the sounds they hear in everyday language. 
The process involves writing down words and reading them back. 
"It is the reverse of, and goes much further than, traditional phonics," she said. "Most of the students I see don't have a learning problem, they just don't learn what they are taught in school." 
Despite the success, Ms Philipson said the Department of Education was not interested in her teaching method. 
"There are some principals and teachers who are interested but the department isn't," she said. 
"There has been a lot of research done into how children learn how to read but that is not filtering down to a school level."