Schools White Paper announcement - our response
Published just over 6 weeks ago, the recent schools white paper set the target of 90% of children leaving primary school having reached the expected standard in reading, writing and maths by 2030, a targeted increase of 25% in just under eight years.
The reactions
The intervening weeks have seen a range of reactions to this and other measures detailed within the paper, with some in the sector reportedly left feeling ‘underwhelmed’ by the paper’s proposals and the government’s own social mobility tsar recognising the targets as “lovely” but raising the question of how they will be achieved in practice.
Here at Bookmark, our vision is clear – we want every child to read
As we set out in our response to the paper, the emphasis it places on the importance of literacy, along with the ambition to increase the numbers of children reading at their expected level, is fully in line with our mission. It is a mission we aim to achieve through our flexible, volunteer-led reading programme, designed to equip children in years 1–4 with the reading skills and confidence they need for a fair chance in life.
It is with this practical, evidence-based intervention that we believe we can support schools in achieving the ambitious literacy targets set out by the government. As our Founder and Chair of Trustees Sharon Pindar outlined in Bookmarks’ response:
“…Bookmark has delivered 30,000 one-to-one reading sessions to children who were below the expected standard. We know that this work, combined with the government’s efforts, will have an impact that will last a lifetime.”
Our programme
Our 6 week reading programmes are specifically designed to support those children who are at risk of not meeting their expected standard and require a little more support in order to get there. Designed using evidence-based recommendations from The Education Endowment Foundation and independently reviewed by the National Literacy Trust, each programme consists of two 30-minute reading sessions per week for 6 weeks. Children meet one-to-one with one of our fully trained volunteers and are encouraged to choose texts and develop their own reading identities through a combination of reading stories and playing fun literacy games.
Through these regular, short sessions our three cores aims are to improve children’s enjoyment of reading, improve their confidence, and subsequently improve their reading attainment. As Megan Dixon wrote recently in Tes Magazine, when it comes to teaching children to read:
“we must help [them] to establish the building blocks of reading for understanding, while also being aware that they will learn things for themselves, as they read.”
By placing the emphasis on the enjoyment of reading, with pupils taking the lead on selecting their stories and subject matter, the format of our reading sessions taps in to what Dixon describes as both the “explicit and implicit” nature of learning, essentially that children are “learning to read and learning from reading”. As they read more frequently and gain more experience and confidence, this in turn can help to develop comprehension and overall reading attainment.
Our impact
This is evidenced in our 2020/21 impact report, where we found that 97% of children who undertook a reading programme with us improved or maintained their reading level, despite the disruption to learning that year. 86% of teachers reported seeing an increase in their children’s reading confidence following their reading programmes and 71% felt their pupils were enjoying reading more.