Explore Bookmark’s plan where 500,000 children will benefit from a programme

We are delighted to introduce our three-year strategy, outlining the scale of our ambition to improve children’s literacy.

We will prioritise the needs of children in disadvantaged communities who face the greatest barriers and for whom the benefits of reading can have the most transformative impact. We will harness the power of reading to change lives and drive social mobility.
Bookmark was set up in 2018 with a very simple vision: we want every child to read. Currently, more than 1 in 4 children leave primary school unable to read well. This disproportionately impacts children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who leave primary school on average a year behind their peers. The Education Endowment Foundation reports that only 10% of these children go on to pass English and Maths GCSE.

Since our inception, we have been developing, piloting and rolling out literacy programmes. We use a data-led approach to make sure our services are as impactful as possible. We have also expanded to reach more areas of need and grown our service lines to provide a wide range of support and to help more children. From sending a small group of volunteers into just three schools in Camden, we have since delivered 124,505 reading sessions in over 319 schools. We have also supplied books, resources and grants to hundreds of additional schools. As a result, the children at our partner schools are better, more confident readers. One school reported that children made 11 months of reading progress after each receiving 6-12 weeks of support.

In 2023, we consolidated our learnings and developed a comprehensive theory of change. This focuses on reading for pleasure to make sure we fulfil our vision – we want every child to read. Reading for pleasure is recognised as a stronger indicator of future educational attainment than socio-economic status. However, recent research by the National Literacy Trust indicates that children’s reading enjoyment is at the lowest level in almost two decades. Nurturing an enjoyment of reading means that children read more, gain confidence as readers and, ultimately, improve their reading skills. We believe this is where Bookmark can have the most impact.

According to the National Literacy Trust’s research, poor literacy skills have been linked to lower life expectancy, in addition to poor mental health and unemployment. One of its studies shows the difference in life expectancy between children from communities with the highest and lowest vulnerability to literacy problems in the country is 26.1 years.

Reading can make a transformational difference to a child’s life. We know that literacy isn’t one‑size-fits-all and that there is so much that goes into making a child a reader. That’s why our model is based around becoming a key literacy partner for primary schools.

Children need us now more than ever. We have big ambitions to expand our reach and increase our depth of support for children in the most disadvantaged communities. Over the course of the next three years, we aim to have benefited 500,000 children across 1,000 schools by improving reading levels and engagement on both a one-to-one and whole school level.
Thank you to everyone who has made it possible for us to support children on their paths to becoming readers. We are grateful to our board of trustees, the Bookmark team, volunteers, partner schools, donors and supporters. We look forward to implementing our plans for future growth to address the UK literacy challenge together, so that more children can experience the joy of reading to have a fairer start in life.