Pending announcement on Tier 2 & 3 Literacy Supports

The Minister of Education emailed Principals last week to say that they would receive this week "the first update on the implementation approach for Tier 2 and 3 Literacy Supports replacing the previous Reading Recovery programme." We are not sure when the announcement will be made.

This is a very hotly anticipated update and one we have been urging the Minister and Ministry to get on and announce - as the lack of clarity on this issue has allowed confusion and fear to grow in the sector.

This is summary of the advice the Minister received on this matter from the Ministry of Education NZ in a briefing dated 9 May and released on the Ministry website, "Structured Literacy Additional Supports: Including Reprioritising Funding from RR&ELS".

This may give us some clues as to what may be announcement this week, although as you can see the advice was not very detailed in many places, so we will have to wait and see what the Minister has finally decided on these matters.

• No specifics on the type/level of training that would be required for Tier 2/3 supports/teachers.

• No preference for whether schools should just be funded for their own in-house specialist or whether to contract in third parties. Basically suggests a mixture of those approaches.

• Confirms that supports need to be across all year levels, which is good.

• Confirms that supports be prioritised for SL (and Maths to come later).

• Confirms that there is potentially $49.5m in funding available (through reprioritising existing supports)

  • $12.4 Programme for Students (ALIM and ALL)

  • $20.1 RR&ELS staffing

  • $4.1m EE&ELS training

  • $4.2m Mauri tu Mauri Ora

• Says they don't know what the demand will be and they are doing some modelling (but unclear how reliable that might be)

• Says these supports need to align with Learning Support but no detail on what this means.

• Mentions engaging with sector but doesn't say how and when - just part of other Curriculum engagement.

• There are some interesting stats in the Appendices on the level of SL training reported by RTLit, RTLB, MOE staff, SLT etc.

We hope that the plans that are announced this week are comprehensive and enable schools to start planning for staffing for 2025 and that existing Reading Recovery teachers have a clear pathway to receiving appropriate PLD as necessary and have options around their future employment, that aim to keep them in the workforce.

We understand, given the fiscal constraints this government is holding to, there may be a need for prioritisation of which schools may get access to additional resourcing, but we hope that the ultimate goal is for every school across Y0-13 to have a Literacy Lead and access to a highly qualified structured literacy intervention specialist, which may also include a bolstered RTLit network.