Our 2024 – 27 Strategy
Discover how we will support more children to improve their literacy skills between 2024 – 27.
Our strategy explains how we will improve children’s literacy by promoting a reading for pleasure culture in primary schools, with a focus on our commitment to prioritising children in disadvantaged communities, where barriers to reading are greatest.
Vision: we want every child to read
Mission: we improve children’s literacy by promoting a reading for pleasure culture in primary schools, with a focus on supporting children in the most disadvantaged communities
Building on our success over six years, we’re now deepening our impact by fostering a love of reading among more children.
Over the next three years, we’d like to reach 1,000 schools and benefit 500,000 children, ensuring they have the opportunity to experience the transformative power of literacy.
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.
Download our 2024 – 27 strategy
Download our strategy document, where we’ve summarised our ambitious three-year plan. We aim to transform children’s lives through literacy and drive meaningful change.
Strategy 2024 – 27
pdf 5.929 MB
Pathways and programmes of support
Our five key pathways
We will achieve our mission by implementing the following five pathways to reading:
- One-to-one reading support and positive role models
- Engaging reading spaces and high-quality, diverse reading resources
- Teacher training and resources
- Creating a reading buzz across the whole school
- Family and parental engagement
Our 10 literacy programmes
Our 10 literacy programmes are central to our ambitious plans for supporting children. We aim to reach significant targets over the next three years, with our work guided by these programmes to make a meaningful impact.
Our reading programmes provide 30-minute weekly sessions for children needing extra support, delivered by volunteers, either in-person or online. We aim to deliver 165,000 reading sessions over the next three years, while diversifying our volunteer base to meet growing demand.
Following an in-depth literacy consultation, we provide each school with a tailored action plan and up to £10,000 in funding to enhance their whole school reading culture.
Our Literacy Partner Programme also serves as an incubator for new service lines, which, once proven effective, are integrated into our broader offerings.
We aim to support 150 schools through this programme.
We create inviting reading spaces, equipped with 200 new books, teacher CPD resources and engaging materials to encourage children to become confident readers and develop a lifelong love of reading.
We plan to expand to nine new areas, supporting 500 schools through our Your Story Corner Programme.
This programme builds on the Your Story Corner Programme, offering sustainable support to schools to further enhance whole school reading cultures. Each participating school receives up to £1,000 in resources annually, along with access to our training and resources. The programme also facilitates networking opportunities for teachers and literacy leads to collaborate and share best practices.
We aim to include 500 schools in our School Network Programme.
We distribute our termly magazine, The Story Corner, to provide children with high-quality reading material over the school holidays, which is particularly important for those children with limited access to books at home. We aim to deliver 2,000,000 copies to children through schools and community settings.
We send schools termly packs of new, diverse books centered on themes often missing from libraries, such as graphic novels and poetry. Each pack is curated by a notable figure in education or literacy and includes scrapbooks for a whole school reading challenge.
We will provide 1,500 Rocket Packs to schools.
We are launching book clubs to engage reluctant readers, providing schools with mini libraries in various genres and resources to create excitement around reading. Each club includes a plan for 10 termly sessions.
We will deliver 300 book clubs to schools.
We provide early years packs for children aged four to five to foster a love of reading before they start school. Each pack includes a book, an early years version of The Story Corner magazine, stationery, storytelling props and family engagement resources.
We aim to deliver 12,000 Story Starter packs to children starting school.
We offer schools CPD grants and memberships with third-party organisations to support embedding a whole-school reading culture. Additionally, we provide webinars, videos and other resources for teacher training.
We will distribute 200 grants to support these initiatives.
To address challenges in family engagement, we will distribute home resources and video content to 40,000 families in disadvantaged communities, empowering them to support their child's reading. We will also build strategic collaborations to enhance and amplify these efforts.
Become a Bookmark volunteer
Help a child by becoming a reading volunteer with Bookmark. Deliver two 30-minute reading sessions a week, face-to-face or online, and change a child’s life story.
Read moreBecome a corporate partner
Become a corporate partner by completing this short form and one of the team will be in touch.
Read moreFrequently asked questions
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Sharon Pindar founded Bookmark Reading Charity in 2018. She now chairs the Board of Trustees to help lead the charity.
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Our CEO is Emily Jack, who joined Bookmark in 2022 and became CEO in 2023. She leads our Senior Leadership Team and staff teams to support children to discover the joy of reading. Visit Our Team page in the About Us section to find out more about who works for Bookmark.
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We want every child to read. Explore more of our vision and mission in our 2024-27 strategy.
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We improve children’s literacy by promoting a reading for pleasure culture in primary schools, with a focus on supporting children in the most disadvantaged communities. We partner with schools and provide one-to-one reading support.
Our evidence base
1. Cree, A., Kay, A., & Steward, J. (2022). The economic and social cost of illiteracy. World Literacy Foundation.
2. Picton, I. & Clark, C. (2023). Children and young people’s book ownership in 2023: A 10-year retrospective. National Literacy Trust.
3. Primary School Library Alliance (2022). Working Together Towards a Library In Every Primary School.
4. Education Policy Institute (2023). Annual Report.
5. Kerr, E. (2021). Paying the price: The cost of very poor adult literacy. Pro Bono Economics.
6. Ministry of Justice (2023). Prison Education and Accredited Programme Statistics 2022 – 2023.
7. Picton, I. & Clark, C. (2022). Seeing yourself in what you read: diversity and children and young people’s reading in 2022. National Literacy Trust.
