Executive Summary

Reading Recovery was designed by Dame Marie Clay, previously Professor of Education at the University of Auckland . It is an early intervention which aims to reduce reading failure by providing intensive and individual help to any child who is falling behind in reading and writing after one year at school.

In 2002, as in previous years, Reading Recovery was available to state (including state-integrated) primary and composite schools. In addition, individual and school returns for 2002 were received from 11 private schools and one health camp that also implemented Reading Recovery. Given that Reading Recovery primarily operates in state primary schools , this article presents information on participating six-year-olds from state and state-integrated schools only.

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 had collected school based summary data for reporting purposes. In 2001, individual student data was collected for the first time to report on Reading Recovery. This report is the product of the second year of individualised data collection. Furthermore, during 2002, the Ministry piloted an online data collection for Reading Recovery in the Otago-Southland region using the same questionnaires as the paper returns. This report is based on data collected from both online and paper returns.

After the successful implementation of the pilot online data collection in 2002, the Ministry is strongly encouraging the use of the online database for the Reading Recovery data collection from 2003 onwards. The online database is currently being further developed.

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' and therefore eligible for Reading Recovery may be those from the bottom 20–25 percent of readers and writers. (Sometimes, there may be as many as 30 percent of six-year-olds in a particular school enrolled in Reading Recovery, although this is rare).