National evaluation report: Full Service Schools Programme 1999-2000

MULTILIT stands for ‘Making up Lost Time in Literacy’.  This Initiative comprises research and development into more effective ways of teaching older low-progress students experiencing severe difficulties in learning literacy skills. 

The MULTILIT Initiative has three main foci: service provision; research; product and programme development.  This report provides an evaluation of the efficacy of MULITLIT in redressing the literacy difficulties of older low progress readers over three years of operation 1996, 1997 and 1998.  The evaluation concludes that almost all MULTILIT programmes have been extremely effective in raising performance levels in reading and related skills.  MULTILIT appears to be feasible as a programme when employed for only two to three hours per day for two terms, and operationalised according to the delineated operating conditions.  The authors have shown that intensive systematic literacy programmes, which draw on what recent research has shown to be critical to effective reading instruction, have the potential to redress social as well as educational problems.  They have also shown that it is possible to do something to reverse declining literacy standards.