Apart from the annual returns to the Ministry of Education of Reading Recovery (RR) data (and to a lesser extent, the four-yearly National Education Monitoring Project cycle data), there is currently no national data sets of reading achievement information for New Zealand primary school children. This article uses the national RR data for 2002 as a basis for estimating the likely full extent to which 6-year-olds may be underachieving in reading after one year of instruction. For the purposes of this article, "average or above" achievement in reading after one year at school is defined as being able to read at or above book level 12 and being able to correctly read 20 or more words from the Burt Word reading test. To gain a wider perspective of reading performance at age six years, the six-year net data from three large urban schools for the years 2000 to 2004 was also analysed. The results show that although some researchers suggest that only two percent of children require extra reading tuition following RR, this figure is probably not a true indicator of the extent of early reading problems. (Contains 4 tables.)