Executive Summary

Key Findings

• In 2010, two-thirds (66%) of state and state-integrated schools offered Reading Recovery and 75% of the total six-year-old population attended schools where Reading Recovery was offered. The proportion of schools offering Reading Recovery and access to Reading Recovery at the student level has decreased slightly (by 3% and 5% respectively) over the last ten years.
• Consistent with previous years, 14 percent of six-year-old students attending state and state-integrated schools entered Reading Recovery for the first time in 2010. In total there were 11,040 students involved with Reading Recovery during the year.
• Reading Recovery was implemented in more higher decile schools than lower decile schools. However lower decile schools that did offer Reading Recovery had proportionately more students enter the intervention than did higher decile schools.
• Māori and Pasifika students were less likely to attend schools where Reading Recovery was offered, compared with the total six-year-old population. However, Māori and Pasifika students from schools that did offer Reading Recovery were more likely than New Zealand European/Pākehā and Asian students to be involved in the intervention.
• In 2010, more than half (59%) of all students in Reading Recovery successfully discontinued their series of lessons by the end of the year (80% of all students who exited Reading Recovery in 2010). Ten percent of students were referred on for specialist help or long-term reading support. A further one-quarter (25%) of students were responding well to their series of Reading Recovery lessons and were carried over to continue the intervention in 2011. A small proportion of students left their school before completing the intervention (4%), or were unable to continue (1%) with the intervention. The percentage of students experiencing each of these outcomes has remained stable over the past ten years.
• Girls, students from high decile schools, Asian and New Zealand European/Pākehā students were more likely to have successfully discontinued their series of lessons in 2010 than boys, students from low decile schools, and Māori and Pasifika students. Although it is important to note that many students (ie, more than 70%) in these latter groups did achieve the levels required to successfully discontinue their Reading Recovery lessons.
• Data collected via three assessment measures: Instructional Text Levels, the Burt Word Reading test and the Writing Vocabulary Task (Clay) provided evidence that successfully discontinued students were reading and writing at the average level expected for their age group when they exited the intervention.
• The majority of successfully discontinued students (90%) were reading texts at, or above, the Turquoise level of Ready to Read (the New Zealand Curriculum Reading Standard for "After two years at school") when they exited Reading Recovery. The standard has been designed to be used for all children after two years at school, however it is important to note that the majority (73%) of successfully discontinued students had not yet completed two years of schooling when they exited Reading Recovery. These results should be interpreted with care as classroom teachers will use a range of evidence when making judgements about student achievement in relation to the Standards.