Francesca Rudkin: Is the dropping use of Reading Recovery a bad thing?

Really interesting article in the New Zealand Herald today about the number of schools offering Reading Recovery.

This system was developed in New Zealand in the 70s in order to support 6-year-olds struggling with literacy. It's been used around the world but now due to new research into how the brain works and learns, it's no longer as popular as it used to be, with less than 40% of schools now offering the programme.

Michael Johnston: In praise of a Kiwi iconoclast

It can be hard for a country to admit that one of its idols has feet of clay. As it happens, one of New Zealand’s educational idols not only had feet of clay, but her name was Clay.

In the 1970s, Marie Clay developed the Reading Recovery programme, an intervention to assist primary-aged children struggling to learn to read. The programme involves daily one-on-one lessons for up to 20 weeks. It is based on the now discredited, ‘whole language’ philosophy, which holds that learning to read comes naturally, like oral language.