Executive Summary

Key findings

Reading Recovery Outcomes

• Reading Recovery outcomes for students who exited the intervention in 2013 were very similar to those of previous years. The majority (79%) of students who exited Reading Recovery made accelerated progress and were successfully discontinued from the intervention. A further 13 per cent of students were referred on for specialist literacy support; five per cent left their school before completing their series of lessons and three per cent were unable to continue their lessons.
• The majority of successfully discontinued students (91%) 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. Three-quarters (74%) of these 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 (not just the text levels) when making judgements about student achievement in relation to the Standards.
• Data collected from the Burt Word Reading Test and the Writing Vocabulary Task (Clay) provided additional evidence that overall, successfully discontinued students were reading and writing within the average band of performance expected for their age group when they exited the intervention.
• A greater proportion of girls, NZ European/Pākehā and Asian students, and students from decile 8 to 10 schools successfully discontinued their series of lessons than boys, Māori, Pasifika, and students from decile 1 to 3 schools. However, many students (ie, at least 74%) in these latter groups did achieve the levels required to successfully discontinue their Reading Recovery lessons.

Access to Reading Recovery

• In 2013 there were 1,518 Reading Recovery teachers in 1,270 schools delivering 531,002 hours of support to 11,057 students. Over the last decade, the proportion of six-year old students entering Reading Recovery has remained stable, while the number of teachers and students has fluctuated and the average hours of support per student has increased.
• Two-thirds (65%) of state and state-integrated schools with six-year-old students offered Reading Recovery. Three-quarters (76%) of the total six-year-old population in state and state-integrated schools attended schools where Reading Recovery was offered.
• Out of the 10,933¹ Reading Recovery students (where individual reports were provided), three-quarters (74%; n=8,137) of students attending state and state-integrated schools entered Reading Recovery for the first time. Twenty-three per cent (n=2,527) were carried over from 2012 and the remaining two per cent (n=256) transferred from another school.
• A higher proportion of higher decile schools implemented Reading Recovery than lower decile schools (71% for decile 8 to 10 schools compared to 58% for deciles 1 to 3 schools). However, lower decile schools that did offer Reading Recovery had proportionately more students enter the intervention than higher decile schools (17% for deciles 1 to 3 schools compared to 10% for decile 8 to 10 schools).
• The proportion of Māori students attending schools where Reading Recovery was offered (72%) was slightly lower than that of the total six-year-old population (76%). Whereas, the proportion of Pasifika students attending schools where Reading Recovery was offered (78%) was slightly higher than that of the total six-year-old population (76%).
• A higher proportion of Māori and Pasifika students from schools that did offer Reading Recovery were involved in the intervention than New Zealand European/Pākehā and Asian students.
• Although access to Reading Recovery for Pasifika six-year-olds is high at the national level (78%), the Auckland region continued to have the lowest level of access for Pasifika students (72%) despite nearly three-quarters (71%) of all Pasifika six-year-olds being enrolled in schools in the Auckland region. This trend has been observed in the data for some years.

Footnote

1. This figure excludes 124 students whose individual reports were unavailable.