Province: replacing reading program offers better value for money
Posted Mar 9, 2011 11:50:30 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Deputy Minister of Education defended her department’s decision to scrap a copyrighted literacy program in favour of a homegrown approach Wednesday.
Rosalind Penfound told the Standing Committee on Public Accounts the province is cutting the Reading Recovery program because it plans to offer a comparable program for $2 million less.
“Our conviction is we can reach more students,” Penfound told reporters following the meeting.
“Start earlier, start in Grade Primary and have a program that addresses the needs of those students in an early intervention model. That would be Grade 1 to Grade 3 and hopefully (we would) have better outcomes for a broader range of students across the system,” she said.
The Reading Recovery program is copyrighted and costs the province $7 million annually. It offers one-on-one tutoring outside the classroom to the bottom 20 per cent of students in Grade 1. It is only offered in some schools.
Committee members raised concerns about what will replace it as no new program has been unveiled.
“We know that there are resources out there in schools including our resource teachers that will be mobilized,” said Penfound. “We are confident, within a month, we are going to have boards know exactly how we are going to be deploying resources, and tooled up and ready to go.”
