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.

Our initial reaction to release of Common Practice Model by Ministry of Education.

Give your feedback to the Office of the Auditor-General on how the Ministry of Education uses information to understand and address inequities in education.

New data out from the Ministry of Education NZ showing a further drop in the number of schools participating in Reading Recovery - a failed literacy intervention.

Professor James Chapman on why the Reading Recovery refresh is not good enough.

Read our press release on the Minister’s new Literacy Strategy released 25 March 2022

Read our submission to the Inquiry on ākonga Māori learning support

In this blog post, Professor Emeritus, James Chapman, provides his response to the Report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the Petition of Amanda Drumm: Teach reading in school through explicit and systematic phonics.

We recap over advocacy efforts over the year, including a link to our latest letter to the Associate Minister for Education setting out five key areas that need to be addressed in the Literacy Strategy. We also provide the first iteration of our ‘Report Card’ of the Government’s progress on permanently and efficiently lifting literacy for all.