Last updated: July 2025

Key findings in 2024

This data from the final year Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support should be understood in the context of reduced numbers of students in the programme due to the approaching end of Ministry funding for the programme and also the teachers in the programme spending a portion of their available time during the year on retraining.

Schools offering Reading Recovery

Following a steady decline in schools offering Reading Recovery since 2014, in 2024 there was a larger 24% decrease. 457 schools offered Reading Recovery in 2024, compared to 599 schools in 2023.

There was also a continued decline in 1:1 Reading Recovery teaching, which will somewhat reflect the use of the same level of Reading Recovery resourcing to now also deliver small-group and whole-school supports. Fewer students received Reading Recovery’s traditional 1-to-1 sessions in 2024 (3,575 students, compared to 5,094 students in 2023, a 29.8% decrease). However, 2,394 students were also supported via small-group sessions as part of the now-enhanced Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support (RR&ELS) model. In total 6,030 individual students were supported by the programme (with some overlaps between supports received).

Entry levels, progress and outcomes

Students’ entry reading-text levels (based on Colour Wheel levels) have been lower since 2021, likely due to a changed requirement to use Phonics Plus books with students prior to starting on Colour Wheel reading books. In 2023 and 2024 students’ progress in the 1-to-1 programme (as measured in improvement in reading-text levels) was, on average, slightly higher than pre-Covid levels.

Students who successfully exited the 1-to-1 programme had comparable outcome levels to previous years. This is likely because Reading Recovery teachers discontinue their support once a student is deemed to have reached the average band of performance for their class.

With 2024 being the final year of funding for Reading Recovery, there was a large rise in students unable to continue the programme (8% in 2023, 19% in 2024). The three major reasons for being unable to continue were: the school not offering Reading Recovery next year, teacher-related reasons (such as the Reading Recovery teacher moving to new job or retiring) and student having a high rate of absences from school.

Compared to the overall national rate of successful completion (62%), rates of successful completion were lower within schools with students who, on average, face many socioeconomic barriers to achievement (51%) and higher among those with few or the fewest socioeconomic barriers (69%). Rates of successful completion were also lower for boys (60%) and Māori (57%) and Pacific (59%) students, and were higher for girls (64%), European (64%) and Asian (68%) students. This is a similar pattern to previous years.

Background

Reading Recovery is a programme originally developed in the 1970s by the late Dame Marie Clay, previously Professor of Education at the University of Auckland. It is an intervention that targets students who after a year at school are having the most difficulty learning to read. It supports them with an intensive one-on-one reading programme of up to 20 weeks.

Data is collected for the purposes of monitoring this long-running programme, first implemented and monitored in NZ schools in 1984.

Why is the Ministry collecting this data?

Reading Recovery data is collected for the purposes of monitoring this long-running, Ministry-funded programme.

The Ministry uses Reading Recovery data:

• to monitor the number of students involved in Reading Recovery and the number of hours and teachers allocated to Reading Recovery for the year
• to monitor the amount of time students spent in Reading Recovery and their outcomes
• to support implementation and monitoring of literacy interventions and programme development
• to support a transparent and open system through public reporting.

Reading Recovery data is also used for general research and statistics, in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020. This may include linking Reading Recovery data with other student data, for example, exploring pathways for Reading Recovery students referred on to supports from a Resource Teacher: Literacy (RTLit) or Resource Teacher: Learning and Behaviour (RTLB). Care is taken that no individual can ever be identified from published analysis.

Notes on the data collection

Throughout the year, Reading Recovery teachers record student-level information on an electronic data collection system as students enter and exit the programme. 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 to the Ministry of Education at the end of the year by those state and state-integrated schools who offer Reading Recovery.

Fee-paying international students are removed from the analyses.

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.

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.