Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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60. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his plans for the reading recovery programme in DEIS and non-DEIS schools. [24012/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Reading Recovery is a literacy initiative that was initially made available for 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. Each of these schools was given an opportunity to have a teacher trained as a Reading Recovery teacher. In some areas where training took place in local cluster groups, schools other than those targeted in the DEIS Action Plan were allowed to participate in the programme.

My Department, through the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST), continues to prioritise this support for DEIS schools as well as maintaining ongoing support for other schools already participating in the Reading Recovery programme.

New non DEIS schools have not been permitted to join the Reading Recovery programme in light of the extensive programme of support now available to all schools in the area of literacy.

The Educational Research Centre (ERC) has reported positively on the range of interventions, including Reading Recovery, in place for DEIS schools. Inspectorate evaluations also demonstrate that the effectiveness of specialised programmes is maximised when they are integrated into the overall literacy programme in a school.

Support for all schools, DEIS and non DEIS, provided by the PDST takes this into account as part of the ongoing professional development programme for "Literacy and Numeracy for Learning and Life - The National Strategy to Improve Literacy and Numeracy for Children and Young People 2011 - 2020" and its "Interim Review Report 2017".