Reading Recovery

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

It's a bit of a long shot but I'm hoping that someone might know if this study exists.

I'm looking for something that sets out the cost/benefit of RR vs other interventions. A sort of 'RR costs x per child and results in average gains of y months in reading and spelling age; intervention z costs x per child and results in gains of y months in reading and spelling age'

I've got plenty of stuff about the limitations of RR own research, how gains aren't held in the long term and how the short term gains are less than other interventions. But other than the fact that it is expensive it's difficult to see how it compares financially to other interventions.

www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/pressreleases/govt_literacy_prog.pdf

educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/uploads/toolkit/EEF_Teaching_and_learning_toolkit_Feb_2014.pdf

Thanks mrz I had the first link, the second may be useful.

I think it's probably the cost of other interventions I'm looking for. I know how much was spent on RR training. The point I want to argue is that for the £165,000 they could have trained x number of teachers in Sound Reading System/Sounds-Write/Phonics International/RWI etc and helped 100 times as many children.Or trained as many teachers for a huge cost saving. Especially if I can already show that the children would probably have made more progress with a different intervention.

Since they've already paid for the training it's probably too late but I might be able to make them think twice about spending more money on it.

You're not a fan? I have been trained a year and tgink it's fantastic but agree that it's a pity more children can't be included.

The problem is there's an increasingly large body of evidence that RR is a quick fix in the short term, but that those gains aren't held through KS2. And the short term gains, while accelerated compared to children that don't receive any extra help they are less than other schemes.

Looking at what I think are the training costs for some of the programs I mentioned, about 330 teachers could have been trained for the same price. That's a lot of money that could have been saved while helping a lot more children.

Am I right in thinking, mrz, that Sounds~Write training is about £400 per person; which includes a copy of the full programme. As S~W (and any other good SP/LP programme) can be used for both whole class teaching and intervention a school could train all its teachers and TAs and still have loads of change left from £165K (I am by that figure.. is it really correct? How many teachers?). It would also have every member of staff fully trained in initial teaching and intervention; not just one teacher.

When I used Fresh Start in KS3 the manual cost about £60 (undoubtedly a bit more now ) and consumables up to a maximum of about £50 per child, though as not all children started right at the beginning (so didn't need to work through every single work book) they weren't so expensive. Add in wages cost for me and my assistant and we worked with between 50 - 60 children (from Ys7, 8 & 9) per year. So we each worked with at least double the number of children RR would per year. Training cost probably about the same as S~W

Debbie Hep's Phonics International would be another very good initial teaching/intervention programme, licence is very cheap and she does online training now (don't know cost but easy to find out).

Most of the SSP programmes would need supplementary reading books (Fresh Start has integral text; but is for older children, younger ones could do RWI)

The point of this post really being that with SP/LP teaching you don't actually need a 'different' programme for reading intervention; what is more important is having a well trained, knowledgeable and reflective (because you sometimes have to work out how to modify an approach to suit a particular child) person to 'deliver' it.

X posted with you, Rafa

SW is 430, SRS 550 and IIRC then PI is about 500 too.

They've spent an additional £12000 on resources. I'd guess that would be enough to provide the schools with enough decodable readers, assuming they didn't already have any.

Where on earth are they getting that sort of money from ?

If they've paid out squillions for RR training something makes me fear that the resources won't be decodables...

Yes Sounds Write costs around £430 which includes everything you need to teach the programme (except reading books). It can be used to teach whole classes or as an intervention so excellent value.

Is this an LA training RR teachers?
If so, what guarantee do they have that the teachers won't just move on?

A 3rd party organisation with multiple financial backers is paying for the initial training as far as I can tell. I presume the ongoing cost of employing the teachers is covered by the LA.

Thanks that's intriguing.