LANE Research - Executive Summary

The future of our society is dependent on the health, wellbeing and educational achievement of the young people of today. It is therefore important that society encourages and enables young people to be healthy, happy, well educated and productively employed. The study of the effects of early economic inactivity on young people has identified a link between early inactivity with a high probability of inactivity at a later stage (Maloney, 2004). Maloney initially defined economic inactivity as “…occurring when an individual is not enrolled in education or training, and not working in the labour market.” Consequences of this economic inactivity or non-participation are negative both for the young person and wider society (Flemming, Kainuku-Walsh, Denny, Watson 2004).

In his address to the inaugural Council Meeting on 27th 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. 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 (Douglas et al, 2002). Also Denny, Clark and Watson (2004) have pointed out that 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.

This study of Linwood College students is based on a rationale that ill health may result in lower engagement in educational learning and aims to quantify the different rates of problems identified.

A number of separate but allied areas were studied in this project.

• Student's demographic data was collated to establish where Linwood College fitted in the Christchurch and national demographics and to assess if there were other compatible groups that could be used for comparisons
• A specialist medical team from the Collaborative for Research and Training in Youth Health and Development was contracted to assess students' vision, hearing, oral health and dental health. Students who needed further treatment to remedy any problems found were given access to free treatment
• The incidence of Irlen Syndrome was investigated along with its impact on the student's ability to read
• Medical measurements were taken by nurses for blood pressure and Body Mass Index (BMI)
• An international fitness standard was used to assess the overall fitness of the students
• Students were assessed academically for literacy and numeracy using a nationally recognised asTTle programme and with the Burt and Probe tests for reading
• Students who were in need of remedial reading were put on a phonics programme Toe by Toe
• The pastoral records of students were examined to measure the behaviour modification effect of all of this intervention
• The academic performance of students was again assessed in 2007 to determine the impact of this 2006 intervention