Our feedback to Ministry on targeted supports

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on the Ministry of Education’s plans on 'Targeted supports for accelerating literacy and te reo matatini'.

We have now finalised and sent off our letter which you can read: here.

Summary of the feedback

We welcome the re-direction of funding from Reading Recovery & Early Literacy Support into structured literacy supports, but overall we were underwhelmed and confused by the proposals. We fear they are merely replicating the shortcomings of the existing system of learning support.

We hope the Ministry are open to making adjustments, ideally before the plans are rolled out, or at a minimum for next year, in order to meet the Minister’s aspiration that the ‘right support be available to the right student at the right time’ and that we cease failing our most vulnerable learners. This would include:

• expanding the staffing supports on offer so they are more comprehensive and accessible to all schools (including intermediate and high schools) and to all students across all year levels,

• clarifying the skills and experience (training) that literacy specialist teachers would be expected to have and make available funding for those needing upskilling,

• considering how the RTLit service could be strengthened, and

• better communicating the offerings in the context of an MTSS model of tiers of instruction, the wider changes to the Curriculum and assessment tools and practices, and the review of the Learning Support workforce that is currently underway.