Labour on reading recovery

David Shearer has announced:

The Labour Party is committing to roll out Reading Recovery to all schools.

Currently only two out of three schools offer the New Zealand-developed scheme, which has an 80 per cent success rate of lifting kids who fall behind in reading.  Just 59 per cent of low decile schools have Reading Recovery.

“Reading Recovery is the gold-standard intervention to help kids that are struggling to learn to read.  It is a proven success, and should be available to every child who needs it,” says David Shearer.

This is a modest, but worthwhile, policy. Having more kids able to read is an excellent thing.

The Government currently spends $40m on reading recovery, and Labour is proposing to lift it to $60m. Only $20m more funding in an overall budget of $10 billion, but it looks to be well targeted towards something that will make a difference.