HIPPY New Zealand: An Evaluation Overview

Galia BarHava-Monteith, Niki Harré, Jeff Field

The Home Instruction Programme for Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) is a home-based intervention programme aimed at educational enrichment, with a focus on pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills. The core aspect of the HIPPY programme is the parent--child interaction, with parents facilitating their children’s learning using a highly structured workbook.

The programme targets parents in economically stressed communities who have low educational levels. Children from financially disadvantaged backgrounds are at increased risk of educational failure, and with increasing numbers of New Zealand children coming from poor homes this issue of increasing importance. Evaluations in a variety of countries have generally shown benefits, but the current study aimed at providing a rigorous evaluation of the programme’s benefits to both children and their caregivers.

The findings showed that HIPPY’s children scored higher than non-HIPPY children on all the measures, and HIPPY caregivers and tutors also obtained slightly better scores. The outcomes of the study further suggest a generalised positive flow-on effect for the local community. Despite issues such as high drop-out rates and the need to collaborate more closely with schools, the paper suggests that policy makers should become more familiar with the services HIPPY can provide to disadvantaged families in New Zealand.