Annual Monitoring of Reading Recovery: the Data for 2007

Introduction

Reading Recovery was designed by Dame Marie Clay, previously Professor of Education at The University of Auckland. It is an early literacy intervention which aims to reduce reading and writing delay by providing intensive and individual help to children who are falling behind¹ in reading and writing after one year at school.

As with previous years, all state and state-integrated schools could apply for funding from the Ministry of Education for Reading Recovery. This report presents information on participating six-year-olds from those schools that offered Reading Recovery during 2007.

Reading Recovery data has been monitored and reported on annually since 1984. This report is a continuation of that annual series. Until 2000, the Ministry of Education collected school-based summary data for reporting purposes. In 2001, individual student data were collected for the first time (including information regarding students’ gender and ethnicity, entry and exit scores, and the number of lessons and weeks spent in Reading Recovery). This report is the product of the seventh year of individualised data collection.

Footnote

1. In some schools, children regarded as “falling behind” are those who, at the age of six, come into the bottom 5, 10 or 15 percent of readers and writers in their peer group. In other schools, however, children seen to be “falling behind” are those in the bottom 20-25 percent of readers and writers. There may be as many as 30 percent of six-year-olds in a particular school in Reading Recovery, although this is rare.