Executive Summary

In general, results repeated the trends evident in previous annual Reading Recovery monitoring reports.

The overall pattern of progress for students in Reading Recovery in 2006 showed 60 percent of students successfully completing Reading Recovery within the year and a further 23 percent judged to be responding well and expected to complete their series of individual lessons in 2007.

The absolute number of children participating Reading Recovery in 2006 (10,757 students) decreased slightly from 2005 (11,054 students), and is similarly reflected in the proportion of six-year-olds entering Reading Recovery (15% in 2005, 14% in 2006). The proportion of schools operating Reading Recovery has decreased from 67% in 2005 to 65% to 2006.

In terms of school decile, the data show that Reading Recovery was available in a higher proportion of high decile schools than low decile schools. However, when available in low decile schools, there were more students entering into Reading Recovery in 2006 than high decile schools. While higher decile schools have slightly higher entry scores across both reading and writing tasks, at exit these differences do not exist. Furthermore, the gains that students made in lower decile schools were slightly greater than for students in higher decile schools for the Burt Word Reading Test and Writing Vocabulary Task. There was little difference in the Reading Recovery Instructional Text Level.