The focus on literacy was also directed towards investing in early intervention with children. The New Brunswick Department of Education partnered with Literacy New Brunswick, Inc.⁷ and community agencies to develop programs to address low levels of literacy in New Brunswick children. In 1997, the now annual Read Across New Brunswick Challenge was started by the Ministry of State for Literacy with Sobeys (grocery) stores and NBTel (provincial telephone company) as corporate sponsors. This was designed as a friendly community competition to motivate citizens into reading on a regular basis (Department of Education, 2003b). Two other community-based programs, Read, Read and Slide and Let's Celebrate Reading Together, were introduced in 1999.

Recent studies to assess literacy levels of Canadian school children revealed that New Brunswick children had similar results to New Brunswick adults on the IALS. When compared to their counterparts in other provinces, the performance of New Brunswick children is disheartening. Outcomes on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Program for International Student Achievement (PISA) 2000 survey, an extensive project designed to provide international indicators of the skills in reading, math and science of 15 year olds, revealed that Canada's overall achievement in reading literacy was near the top of the 32 countries tested (Bussière et al., 2001. However, the average reading scores of New Brunswick grade 10 students, both girls and boys, were the lowest in the country.

⁷ Literacy New Brunswick, Inc. (LNBI) is a non-government organization that promotes the importance of early literacy interventions and a literacy-rich culture through involvement with various provincial literacy initiatives (Literacy new Brunswick, Inc., 2004).