Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this matter and the Minister for Education and Skills for attending.

Last Friday I attended a presentation of certificates in the Limerick Education Centre, with which the Minister will be very familiar. The certificates were for teachers who have recently obtained a qualification to deliver the Reading Recovery programme. As the Minister will know, this is an early intervention programme offered to children in senior infants and first class to improve their literacy. The participants have an obvious need of help of a concerted one-to-one nature. The programme has been in operation for a number of years. In excess of 20,000 children have benefited from it since its initiation and there is widespread support for it. In the recent past, the Department of Education and Skills has sanctioned the provision of Reading Recovery to non-DEIS schools. This follows on from the previous debate.

The main issue concerns the training of Reading Recovery teachers and those teachers who are on secondment being returned to their posts after five years. This leaves a gap in respect of the ability of education centres like the Limerick Education Centre to train Reading Recovery teachers. It is estimated that there are seven leaders. An extra two leaders would be able to train an additional 28 teachers for schools across the country. This would benefit in or around 200 children. Anywhere between 280 and 300 children would potentially benefit from this.

I know that a huge number of schools has already signalled that they would like to be able to get into this. I think in excess of 155 non-DEIS schools have applied. While the Department has allowed non-DEIS schools to enter the Reading Recovery programme, the fact that we are short of Reading Recovery leaders because they are returning to the classroom to carry out functions in their base schools means we do not have the capability to train them.

I do not believe anybody really disputes the merits of Reading Recovery. If one saw the five children who were present last Friday afternoon when I visited Marshal House in Limerick, listened to their parents talk about the change in confidence and behaviour the programme has brought about and listened to their teachers talk about the transition those children can make from first class up through the ranks without having recourse to learning support and resource, which is the usual safety net that is left when children move from first class and do not have the basic literacy levels attained, one could see that this crutch is removed. This is an 18 week programme. It is a short stint and is a very focused, intensive and parent-supported scheme that works.

Unfortunately, if a child is in a small rural school or an urban non-DEIS school, they may not have access to it. A child can be educationally disadvantaged in any location in the country. Their postal address does not dictate whether they will or will not be disadvantaged. Going back to the previous discussion, the model of assigning resources, be they for Reading Recovery, learning support or resource, based on a postal address is a bit outdated. A child can be every bit as socially and educationally disadvantaged in a very affluent area as they can be in a so-called socially deprived area. Could we get those Reading Recovery leaders in place to put the necessary teachers out into the schools through our education centres to deliver this programme?

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I have met with some Reading Recovery teachers and certainly their dedication and commitment to the programme is evident when one speaks to them. I am pleased to have been given the opportunity by the Deputy to clarify the position on literacy supports for primary schools. My Department's policy in this area is outlined in Literacy and Numeracy for Learning and Life - The National Strategy to Improve Literacy and Numeracy for Children and Young People

2011-2020. The strategy required that a greater emphasis be placed on literacy and numeracy within a balanced curriculum across all schools. This strategy has also been prioritised for investment. This year, an additional €6 million has been provided for the implementation of the strategy, bringing the annual budget to €13.8 million.

I am pleased to inform the House that standards in the areas of literacy and numeracy have shown substantial improvement over the period of the strategy. A recent study by the independent Educational Research Centre, ERC, found that overall performance in reading and mathematics by students in second and sixth classes was significantly higher than in the 2009 assessments. These are the first significant improvements recorded by the national assessments in over 30 years.

Targets for improvement in the national literacy and numeracy strategy 2011-20 were thought to be ambitious in 2011 when they were set. These results show that the targets have already been met for the overall student population well in advance of the 2020 target. The strategy places a special emphasis on the needs of schools serving areas of disadvantage.

Reading Recovery is a literacy programme offered to DEIS band 1 and band 2 schools only as part of Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, DEIS, the Action Plan for Educational Inclusion, which was launched in May 2005. Reading Recovery is an early intervention designed to provide children who have particular difficulties in reading and writing after their first year in primary school with a period of intensive individualised teaching support. Schools in these areas were invited to have teachers trained in the programme. In some areas where training took place in local cluster groups, additional schools were facilitated in participating in the programme. My Department has prioritised support for the programme and has spent over €4 million on it over the past five years. Current plans provide that support will continue for over 500 schools involved in the programme. Since 2010, over 20,000 students have benefited from the provision of the programme.

The recent ERC evaluation of the DEIS programme made positive findings concerning the impact of the programme on student learning. While the intensive phase of training is completed, my Department support services continue to offer training where required, for example, new teachers.

In conclusion, support for literacy will continue to be a priority for my Department. The evidence shows that the current approach is yielding good results for student learning. Significant investment is being made across all schools. However, my Department is anxious that we continue to target schools with the greatest need with most supports, particularly in a climate of constrained budgets.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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On a day when the country is talking about literacy through the exploits of Leopold Bloom, giving a child the ability to read independently is probably one of the greatest gifts one can give. It is better than a situation I experienced recently. A man in his fifties arrived at my constituency office. I gave him a form for a housing adaptation grant and he told me he could not fill it out because he was illiterate. The only other person who knew that was his wife. He had reared a family and put them through university. Early intervention does work and I acknowledge the Minister's reply in respect of that.

The Minister mentioned DEIS band 1 and band 2 schools. She knows the make up of my constituency as she is in a neighbouring constituency. She knows that there are very few DEIS schools there. However, a child can be as educationally and socially disadvantaged in a small rural school or a small urban school as they can be in an inner-city school or on an island. One does not need to be fixed in a particular postal address box to be educationally disadvantaged. This is the point the teachers and I are making. If one likens it to learning support and resource, can one imagine the hullabaloo that would occur if the Department said that only DEIS band 1 and band 2 schools were to get learning support and resources. There would be uproar from parents and rightly so.

This programme works. We saw children last Friday from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds and diverse backgrounds. They had very little in common other than the difficulty they had in their early capture of literacy. The programme worked. It does not matter whether one is the child of a millionaire in Sandymount or the child of an unemployed person in Ballydehob. It is a very short programme held during the late part of senior infants and the early part of first class. The Minister referred to second class and she is dead right because that is the point where these issues are measured. That is the point when the MICRA-T and the SIGMA-T are administered in schools and the child is essentially categorised as needing learning support and resource or not. It is too late at that stage, which is why I am asking that every child, regardless of where they come from, their parents' occupation or their school, would have access to a programme like this that will allow them to enjoy what the rest of take for granted, namely, the ability to pick up something and read it independently.

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I again assert my commitment to this. I have been to a lot of primary schools where I have seen children in a variety of programmes, including Reading Recovery, that are focused on small groups of children - I know that in this case, it is one to one - and that ensure they have the opportunity at that very early and crucial stage to learn how to read. I agree with the Deputy that it is a very basic skill that every person in the country should have.

I think the Deputy said there are seven Reading Recovery teacher leaders in place currently. They deliver the training to teachers so the teachers go out and work in the schools. I will certainly look at those numbers. Obviously, it would be subject to finding the resources. I certainly agree with the Deputy that it is a programme that has delivered very good results so we will have a look at it.