More than seventy years ago a young teacher, Rebecca Ostrowiak, recognised the desperate plight of the many children and adults who, for a variety of reasons, found themselves unable to cope with the basic skills of education - reading and writing. In the early 1920's she showed great insight by relating home and school performance by visiting the homes of her pupils to find out what caused them to behave as they did in class.

Rebecca Ostrowiak gradually acquired the reputation of teaching the unteachable, until she became an educationist in private practice teaching any child or adult to read, succeeding where others had said, "They would never learn."

During thirty years of practical experience, a dedicated Mrs. Ostrowiak developed a system for teaching reading. In 1958, in response to numerous requests from people desperate to know the secret of her success, she and her daughter Edna Freinkel, began work on the series "Teach Any Child or Adult to Read", which was first published in 1965. The system has been refined to form the Rebecca Ostrowiak Reading Programme.

The success of the system has not only resulted in international recognition and the approval of various Education Departments, but in superior personal and academic achievement by thousands of past students.

Rebecca Ostrowiak passed away in 1981, but her work has been continued by her daughter Edna Freinkel, and the dedicated teachers at the Rebecca Ostrowiak School of Reading in Germiston, South Africa.