The Founder of a revolutionary programme to reduce the number of children with literary difficulties in school, will be meeting with the Premier as well as teachers and administrators over the next two days.

Dame Marie Clay founded Reading Recover, the scientifically-based reading research programme that teaches all the essential elements of reading.

The programme was implemented in Bermuda in 1997 and has been fully implemented in the public school system.

Over seven years some 55 teachers have been trained and all 18 Government primary schools have at least one full-time Reading Recovery teacher.

Individual students receive a half-hour lesson each school day for 12 to 20 weeks with these specially trained Reading Recovery teachers. As soon as students can read within the average range of their class and demonstrate that they can continue to achieve, their lessons are discontinued and new students begin individual instruction.

As of June 2004, 1,069 Primary Two students have participated in the programme and the average success rate for students successfully completing the programme is 78 percent.

Besides delivering a keynote address at La Coquille today, Dame Marie will also be meeting with Premier Alex Scott and attending a cake and ice-cream party for Reading Recovery students at Windreach.

On Friday, Dame Marie will host a professional development seminar for teachers involved in the Reading Recovery Programme at BUEI.

Dame Marie, who began developing this unique programme in the 1970s. It has since been adopted in five major countries, but works well in Bermuda because of our size. ?Bermuda has made so much progress, but we can do better,? she said.

She said it was important to get more children through the programme in any given school year. There are currently eight children per teacher participating in the programme in Bermuda.

Cliff Johnson, from Georgia State University, will be working with teachers on Friday.

Bermuda?s Reading Recovery Programme is affiliated to Georgia State and Mr. Johnson said it was unusual for an educational programme to have lasted this long, which he says goes to show that it works.