Literacy programme turns kids around

Bream Bay College has marshalled all 500 of its students to lift literacy levels in a programme principal Wayne Buckland says has produced "phenomenal" improvements.

The Ruakaka college used a peer tutoring programme developed by former Auckland University education student Kerrie Lomas. Senior students worked with juniors to discuss pictures, titles and words and what they meant.

Ms Lomas, while working as part of a team addressing low literacy levels at Bream Bay, had noticed that "more than half the students aged between 11 and 14 had a reading comprehension age at or below 10 years. Many of these students were behaving badly in class, not necessarily because they were inherently disobedient but because they had difficulty reading and understanding."

Ms Lomas and the school's head of English, Mark Bayer, began in 2002 to look at how they could introduce literacy initiatives.

She looked at published research on peer tutoring and reciprocal reading and "basically amalgamated the two programmes into a format that was suitable for a secondary school".

The programme involved ranking students into bands of reading abilities and training other students to become tutors.

The programme was run during 2003, with data showing reading comprehension ability recorded before and after and later analysed using an Auckland University computer program.

By March last year the data was showing a huge improvement, and the college has now released figures to illustrate the gains made.

The figures show only 9 per cent of students are now reading at an age of 10 or below. Just over half (53 per cent) are reading and comprehending at their chronological age, 33 per cent are performing above their age at 13 to 16 years and a further 5 per cent are reading above 16 years.

Head boy Shane Winton tutored a lower reading level group, and said the pupils grew in confidence as the programme continued. "Even kids who wanted to muck around improved."

Ms Lomas said it was noticeable that improving literacy was accompanied by a shift in attitude.

"Students feel so much better about themselves and many parents said how easier it was for younger students to assimilate into the secondary system."