LITERACY AND NUMERACY EMPOWERMENT PROJECT

A Christchurch Initiative by Linwood College and the Wayne Francis Charitable Trust

CONTENTS

Welcome to the LANE research website

In his address to the inaugural Council Meeting on 27^th October 2004, Mayor Garry Moore said. " I'd like to give a guarantee to our kids that in this city they will get to certain levels of literacy and numeracy. If you can read and count then you've got a very good start in life. This, however, cannot be undertaken by our schools on their own."

The LANE Project (Literacy and Numeracy Empowerment) was started in 2005 with funding from the Wayne Francis Charitable Trust by a team headed by Alan Parris at Linwood College. The project was set up to scope the problem of youth literacy and numeracy competency, and investigate strategies to enable the city guarantee to be fulfilled. It would start with no preconceived parameters and encompass as many potential types of youth as possible; from reluctant learners to truants to the more disadvantaged categories.

A literature search in 2005 suggested that medical barriers to learning could be a factor to lower achievement in education. Schools are unable to influence many barriers to learning but early medical interventions can have a profound influence on students' life chances.

In particular children with problematic vision have difficulty performing reading tasks which are basic to achieving curriculum outcomes. Students who are failing in education also have exceptionally high health needs and research suggests that the earlier students receive appropriate health interventions the greater the effect on the students' educational opportunities. As a consequence of this the LANE project conducted a comprehensive Health Pride Expo using 450 Year 9 and year 10 students at Linwood College in 2006.

Young adults with a poor understanding of decoding have a serious disadvantage because when they read, their word recognition process is slow and their understanding is compromised. These students have experienced years of failure by the time they reach high school and their consequent deficits in vocabulary and knowledge mean they find it difficult to function at a secondary school level and too often they leave with few qualifications and little hope of a well-paid job and a secure and satisfying future.

While some children can learn to read seemingly effortlessly, many find the process difficult. Some of these children are being left behind and research shows that students who do not make good initial progress in learning to read find it increasingly difficult to learn as time goes by. The longer it takes, the harder it gets.

Toe by Toe has been used to redress the deficit at Linwood College and is now at Te Ora Hou, the YMCA educational branch in Christchurch and shortly at the Youth Unit at Paparua Prison.

Latest News

July 5, 2008 NZ Listener publishes "Seizing the Day" , written by Rebecca Macfie. This feature is based on the research done by the LANE project. NZ Listener, July 5-11 2008 Vol 214 No 3556

July 3, 2008 LANE Research website is launched.

Download the full report

LANE 2006
Adobe PDF Document
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Health Project - Overview

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