11. Question No. 11—EducationHon JAN TINETTI (Labour) to the Minister of EducationQuestion No. 11—Education11. Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour) to the Minister of Education: Talofa Mr Speaker. How many if any teachers will lose their jobs due to cuts to Reading Recovery?Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): I recently announced $67 million of investment into structured literacy approaches to ensure that Kiwi kids are learning to read using evidence-based approaches proven to lift achievement and close the equity gap. As a result of this reading-recovery contracts due to expire at the end of this year will not be renewed as this Government commits to consistent use of best practice in our schools. Teaching staff who are employed under the ministry-allocated 271 full-time equivalent reading-recovery roles have already been offered the opportunity to retrain using structured approaches to literacy and many have already taken up this offer. The ministry advise that therefore current reading-recovery teachers may not necessarily lose their jobs.Hon Jan Tinetti: How many children will lose access to reading recovery as a result of cuts to the reading recovery programme and its teachers?Hon ERICA STANFORD: Well good news: this Government is introducing a tier 2 and 3 which is small group and one-on-one interventions using structured literacy so all children at primary school who are falling behind in their reading will have access to proven methods of intervention consistent with classroom teaching and structured literacy intervention.Hon Jan Tinetti: Is the Minister aware of the Government's own report that found that children who partake in the reading recovery programme made double the normal progress expected; if so why is she cutting the successful programme?Hon ERICA STANFORD: I will not continue to fund a programme that at the core of its philosophy believes in teaching children the habits of poor readers. That research that that member is quoting is taking a look at reading recovery compared to what they're doing now which is a little sprinkling of structured literacy. So what we know is when you do structured literacy you get better results. So how about we just do structured literacy and see what happens because we know the evidence backs that up.Hon Jan Tinetti: What does she say then to Professor Janet Gaffney who led the introduction of reading recovery at Illinois successfully where structured literacy programmes were the programmes of the day and said Because reading recovery teachers plan based on the child's strengths it doesn't matter what classroom programme is happening the individual nature of the remedial programme means that observation and assessment drive the teaching."?Hon ERICA STANFORD: I'll go back to my main point that I made in my last answer. At the heart of reading recovery they believe in teaching children the habits of poor readers. The three-cueing system: look at the picture guess the word. Those are the habits of poor readers. We know from all of the evidence from structured literacy in-class teaching that the need for remedial reading drops by up to two-thirds. So we know that structured literacy is the approach that's going to work for most of our kids. I would also like to quote a very learned person in fact a very learned teacher who said that structured literacy was one of the best things that she had seen in her lifetime of teaching. And that person was Jan Tinetti. [Interruption]SPEAKER: That's enough.Hon Jan Tinetti: Will she guarantee that any future remedial reading programme will be funded at the same amount as reading recovery and have the same if not better results than reading recovery?Hon ERICA STANFORD: Absolutely.Katie Nimon: What has she heard from parents about the shift away from reading recovery interventions towards structured literacy?Hon ERICA STANFORD: What a timely question. I was in the airport at Wellington yesterday heading down to see the Secondary Principals' Association of New Zealand conference people and I was approached by a mother whose young son she told me had dyslexia. In year 8 he was reading between a year 1 and year 2 level. With a structured literacy intervention he gained that entire primary school—six years of reading—so that he was ready to start high school using a structured literacy intervention. That is the result I want to see for all Kiwi kids who are falling behind in their reading—evidence-based structured literacy approaches that are proven to work.Hon Jan Tinetti: What does she say to Paula who is one of the very many reading recovery teachers who have contacted me and will be losing her job at the end of the year who says "Why would you take trained teachers away from those students who need them the most?"Hon ERICA STANFORD: Well my message to that woman is firstly thank you so much for being a teacher. We value you. The ministry has already contacted all of those reading recovery teachers offered them retraining in evidence-based structured literacy and many of them are taking that up. So what I would say to that teacher is "Please take up the opportunity to retrain in structured literacy and be part of the tier 2 and tier 3 interventions using a structured literacy method."Hon Member: To the rescue.Hon Chris Bishop: Do—ha ha!SPEAKER: Is that a question?Hon Chris Bishop: Does the structured literacy method teach children for example to sound out and say the sentence "Shooting fish in a barrel."?SPEAKER: We'll go to Dr Carlos Cheung."