Key Findings

Reading Recovery Outcomes

Reading Recovery outcomes for students who exited the support in 2019 follow a similar pattern to previous years.  Reading Recovery classifies students who are able to work effectively with their cohort without additional support as successfully discontinued.  In 2019, 56% of students (n= 4,640) who had Reading Recovery lessons were classed as successfully discontinued. Approximately three-quarters (74%) of students who exited Reading Recovery in 2019 (including 2018 students who were carried over to 2019) were successfully discontinued.  A further 17% of students were referred on for specialist support, 5% left their school before completing their series of lessons and 4% 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 expectation following two years of schooling) when they exited Reading Recovery. Sixty-two percent of these students had not yet completed two years of schooling when they finished their lesson series. 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 New Zealand Curriculum reading expectations.

Consistent with previous years, data collected from the Burt Word Reading Test and the Writing Vocabulary Task provided additional evidence that successfully discontinued students were reading and writing within the average band of performance expected for their age group when they exited Reading Recovery.

For students that exited Reading Recovery, a greater proportion of girls, NZ European and Asian students, and students in higher decile schools successfully discontinued their series of lessons than boys, Māori and Pacific students, and students from lower decile schools. However, at least 67% of Māori and Pacific students, and 65% students from low decile schools were successfully discontinued from their Reading Recovery lessons.

The likelihood of being successfully discontinued was similar (73-75%) for all students who exited the Reading Recovery, regardless of whether they entered for the first time in 2019, were carried over from 2018 or transferred from another school.

Access to Reading Recovery

Based on reports submitted by schools, in 2019, Reading Recovery was delivered in 929 state and state-integrated schools, by 1,072 Reading Recovery teachers. Schools reported they had 398,147 Reading Recovery hours available to support 8,336 students, giving an average of 48 hours available per student. The number of Reading Recovery teachers in 2019 decreased compared to 2018, however the number of hours per student was similar. Note, these data are derived from reports submitted by schools.

In 2019, 51% of state and state-integrated schools with six-year-old students offered Reading Recovery. Fifty-eight percent of the total 6-year-old population in state and state-integrated schools attended schools where Reading Recovery was offered. Ten percent of all students attending state and state-integrated schools entered Reading Recovery in 2019.

From 2005 to 2012, the percentage of students with access to Reading Recovery (around 76%) and the percentage entering Reading Recovery (around 14%) were reasonably consistent. From 2013 to 2019, students' access to Reading Recovery has decreased from 76% to 58% (a decrease of 18%), and the proportion of students entering Reading Recovery has decreased from 14% to 10%. Note that access to Reading Recovery is estimated using the information provided in end of year school reports from principals of schools that have offered Reading Recovery in the year concerned and student enrolment data from the Ministry of Education.

Data Collection

Throughout the year, Reading Recovery teachers record student-level information on an electronic data collection system as students enter and exit the support. At the end of the year, when all individual student reports have been entered by the teacher(s), the principal of each Reading Recovery school is asked to confirm this information, as well as complete the end-of-year school report. These reports are submitted by state and state-integrated schools to the Ministry of Education.

School reports provide school-level information such as the number of students involved in Reading Recovery and the number of hours and teachers allocated to Reading Recovery for the year.

Individual student reports provide student-level information such as the ethnicity, gender and age of the student, the amount of time spent in Reading Recovery, outcome from Reading Recovery, and entry and exit scores on three assessment tools.

Fee-paying international students were removed from the analyses. All percentages are rounded to 0 decimal places. Where percentages did not sum to 100%, 1 percentage point was added or removed to the largest figure. Further, counts may vary between tables when broken down by demographic variables, due to missing data for some students, or some tables only reporting a subset of responses.

Reading Recovery Summary Data (tables and figures)

Sections of the report are outlined below, listing indexes of data tables and figures available that can be downloaded as an MS Excel Spreadsheet, or the full report as a spreadsheet under the Downloads section.

Background

Acknowledgements

The Ministry of Education would like to thank all the Reading Recovery tutors, teachers, and principals who completed their annual returns. We greatly appreciate the time and effort that went into providing the information. We would also like to thank National Reading Recovery for their feedback on the annual data analysis.

About Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery is an early literacy support that aims to accelerate reading and writing progress by providing intensive, daily one-to-one literacy instruction to children who are falling behind their peers in reading and writing after one year at school.

Reading Recovery was developed by the late Dame Marie Clay, previously Professor of Education at the University of Auckland.

Reading Recovery was designed to achieve two outcomes:

1. To accelerate the reading and writing achievement of six-year-old children who are identified as having made less-than-expected progress after one year of classroom-based literacy teaching.
2. To identify the small number of students who will need continued additional specialist literacy support.

All state and state-integrated schools can apply for funding from the Ministry of Education to help with the costs associated with the implementation of Reading Recovery.

Reading Recovery data has been monitored and reported on annually by the Ministry of Education since 1984. The purpose of the Annual Monitoring of Reading Recovery report is to provide information about access to the support (i.e. schools that offered Reading Recovery) and to report on student outcomes and progress as a result of Reading Recovery.

References

• Clay, M.M. (2019). An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement (4th Edition). Auckland: The Marie Clay Literacy Trust.
• Gilmore, A., Croft, C., & Reid, N. (1981). Burt Word Reading Text: New Zealand Revision. New Zealand Council for Educational Research, Wellington