Read our feedback to Ministry on tier 2 and 3 literacy supports announced August 2024

Minister to announce details of Tier 2 and 3 Literacy Supports.

Why the Minister’s decision to stop government funding of the Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support programme is the right one.

A teaching principal’s take on the Government announcement on rollout of structured literacy training, urging that teachers be given more time to digest the science and come on board.

Two pieces of news came through recently from the Ministry of Education. The first was changes to priorities for Regionally-Allocated PLD and the second was the job cuts at the Ministry. We are sitting on the fence as to whether these developments help allay fears in the sector on the structured literacy mandate, or add to them. The focus should be on replacing the top brass at the Ministry and taking the time to get the rollout of PLD on structured literacy to the sector right. Read our views on both these issues in this blog post.

We suggest there are many positive signs that the implementation of the Structured Literacy mandate will be done well; based on the best available evidence of what we know works, acknowledgement of the things we don’t know, and in a pragmatic and common-sense way that is able to flex as new information and evidence comes to hand.

We share the latest blog post from Number Agents. This one is focused on how to deliberately plan for and bring in knowledge building through child-led play, structured literacy blocks, and other areas of the curriculum.

Read about the steps school leaders can take when deciding on investing in literacy instruction training and curriculum materials, as well as what questions a parent can ask their child’s schools on the school’s literacy instruction.

A wrap up of all the positive developments in literacy policy and teaching practice over the past year in New Zealand and our focus for the year ahead.

Read our Draft Literacy Policy White Paper and send us a submission by 17 February 2024.

Find out what we have been up to over the past 12 months and what our focus is now that we will soon have a new Government and Minister in place.

We respond to Minister of Education and teacher union response to National Party Literacy policy announcement.

Read our press release in response to the National Party’s “Literacy Guarantee” policy annoncement ahead of the 2023 Election.

As part of our advocacy work, we have collected and present here, information from schools across Aotearoa New Zealand on their implementation of a structured literacy approach.

Emeritus Professor James Chapman responds to the Reading Recovery ‘And + And’ “refresh”

We are concerned that the rhetoric of the Minister and the behaviour of the Ministry and ITE providers does not align in regard to the elimination of balanced literacy practices and the Minister’s firm adherence to implementing evidence-based practice

This report summarises feedback received in late 2021 from 237 teachers on the quality of teacher training they received at New Zealand universities on literacy instruction. There is a lot of room for improvement!

Read about our reaction to the Government’s announcement that it will offer a temporary reprieve to schools concerned about implementing its new NCEA numeracy and literacy standards.

Read this post about what you can do to stop literacy instruction becoming a political football.

Listen in as Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology at Massey University, James Chapman, provides some serious food for thought on the new Common Practice Model and some of the controversial elements of the National Party's education policy.