Executive Summary

Key findings

Reading Recovery Outcomes

• Reading Recovery outcomes for students who exited the intervention in 2015 follow a similar pattern to previous years. The majority (78%) of students who exited Reading Recovery made accelerated progress and were successfully discontinued from the intervention. A further 14 per cent of students were referred on for specialist literacy support; six per cent left their school before completing their series of lessons and three per cent were unable to continue their lessons.
• The majority (92%) of successfully discontinued students 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 (75%) 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 Pākehā/European 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, a majority of students (ie, at least 71%) in these latter groups did achieve the levels required to successfully discontinue their Reading Recovery lessons.

Access to Reading Recovery

• In 2015 schools reported 1,405 Reading Recovery teachers in 1,184 schools had 489,668 hours available to support 10,693 students.¹ Over the last decade, the proportion of six-year-old students entering Reading Recovery has remained fairly stable, while the number of teachers and students has fluctuated. After years of gradually increasing, in 2015 (as in 2014) the average hours of support available per student decreased.
• In 2015, sixty per cent of state and state-integrated schools with six-year-old students offered Reading Recovery. About three-quarters (72%) of the total six-year-old population in state and state-integrated schools attended schools where Reading Recovery was offered. Twelve per cent of students attending state and state-integrated schools entered Reading Recovery in 2015. The percentage of students with access to Reading Recovery and the percentage entering Reading Recovery has been declining over the past decade.
• Out of the 10,537 Reading Recovery students (whose individual student reports were provided), three-quarters (74%) entered for the first time; a quarter (24%) were carried over from 2014 and the remaining two per cent transferred from another school.
• A smaller proportion of lower decile schools implemented Reading Recovery than higher decile schools (53% for deciles 1 to 3 schools compared to 63% for decile 4 to 7 schools and 65% for decile 8 to 10 schools). However, lower decile schools that did offer Reading Recovery had proportionately more students enter the intervention than higher decile schools (16% for deciles 1 to 3 schools compared to 13% for decile 4 to 7 schools and 10% for decile 8 to 10 schools).
• The proportion of Māori students attending schools where Reading Recovery was offered (66%) was lower than that of the total six-year-old population (72%). The proportion of Pasifika students attending schools where Reading Recovery was offered (75%) was higher than that of the total six-year-old population.
• Consistent with previous years, 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.

Footnote

1. This figure under-represents the number of students in Reading Recovery, as eight schools providing school reports did not state the number of students in Reading Recovery.