A reading programme for children created in New Zealand in the 1980s, and used by schools overseas, is now used by less than half of all eligible primary schools here.
It comes as new data from the Ministry of Education was released today, revealing that numbers in the programme is at its lowest point.
In the report, the ministry noted that “despite much of the country being in lockdown for the final months of 2021, there is no large impact evident in the data. However, a few Covid impacts did show through".
Reading recovery was designed to be an intervention for children who, at the age of six, aren’t reading at the same level as their peers.
Berhampore Primary School in Wellington uses it, and principal Mark Potter said the kids benefit greatly from it.
However, Canterbury's Kaiapoi North School principal Jason Miles said the programme should be ditched, and the funding reallocated.
"It's not the best approach for our most needy students," Miles said.
Reading recovery was designed at Auckland University in the '80s, and to date it has served over 300,000 school children.
But, since 2013, participation in the programme has been on the decline.
In 2019, there were over 8000 students taking part. That number has now dropped by 21% for the year 2021, with just over 6000 students taking part.
Massey University education psychologist James Chapman said he’s not surprised by the figures, and he believes the programme needs major changes to stop failing New Zealand children.
"Between two and four years after children have been successful in reading recovery, their results have gone backwards. They are way behind their normally achieving peers,” Chapman said.
However, Auckland University’s Rebecca Jesson, who leads the reading recovery programme, said their research shows it is helping students.
“Our evaluation set told us that reading recovery does help the children it serves, it does have long-term effects, measurable long-term effects all the way to Year 10,” Jesson said.
She also said there’s more to the numbers than meets the eye.
“We've had schools not be able to open, we've had teachers not be able to teach children because they've been redeployed somewhere else,” she said.
Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti said the figures were concerning.
"We know that we've got the potential here to create something even better," Tinetti said.
The National Party’s education spokesperson, Erica Stanford, said the Government needs to take a more structured approach to the programme.
"It's very important that New Zealand take a look at that data and consider whether or not we continue on the reading recovery model or move to a different tier three intervention that takes into consideration the latest science around structured literacy,” Stanford said.
Despite Potter’s school having a successful run with the reading recovery programme, he now has a backlog of students needing sessions.
He said the problem is resources.
“We’ve been asking for a long long time in the profession to get better resourcing around interventions needed. There’s just not enough,” Potter said.
Miles wants the Government to use the funding for the 'science of reading' learning approach.
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