Support Life-Changing Literacy Interventions for Children This April by Voting for The Children’s Literacy Charity

The Children’s Literacy Charity vision is to close the literacy gap for disadvantaged children, helping those who start behind in life to catch up and get ahead. Every year, over 40% of disadvantaged children from deprived backgrounds leave primary school unable to read well. Many can be up to two years or more behind their peers across all the literacy skills: reading, writing, comprehension, listening and speaking. This literacy gap has a profound effect on their life chances. For some, starting behind means staying behind. The earlier the intervention, the better the outcome yet some children start primary school so far behind that they are already below any measurable benchmark. These are the children The Children’s Literacy Charity supports by giving them a fair chance to get ahead and ultimately to realise their full potential in life.

What Does The Children's Literacy Charity Do?

The charity delivers expert, one-to-one literacy tuition in dedicated Literacy Lab spaces in schools. The specially recruited and trained tutors run twice weekly sessions with those children who need the most help. The tuition is tailored to each child’s specific needs and the charity has evolved a highly effective, phonics-based approach to giving children with poor literacy skills a vital step up.

Working usually with children who are just starting school, the charity operates in areas with high rates of deprivation and helps children who may be disadvantaged for a number of reasons such as having parents who struggle with their own literacy or they may have special education needs or speak English as a foreign language. 

After two to three terms, the vast majority (over 90%) of the children supported narrowed or closed their literacy gap. Over two thirds close their literacy gap completely and many step ahead of their peers across all the literacy skills. By helping these young children to catch up, the charity is also helping them to become more confident, more resilient and more able to change their lives, for good.

With the Covid-19 lockdown and school closures, The Children’s Literacy Charity believes its work is now more important than ever before. While in the last year, some tuition has been delivered online – sometimes with children using mobile phones because they don’t have laptops – some of the children may not live in a good home learning environment and can lack parental encouragement or even a decent internet connection.

All the evidence so far suggests that disadvantaged children are struggling more than ever and being left even further behind while the charity’s tutors say that for those most in need of support, in person tuition can make such a crucial difference to literacy progress and ultimately to life chances. The charity currently works in primary schools in London and Manchester and wants to expand its provision to more city areas at a time when the risk of young people being locked into a cycle of poverty and underachievement is greater than ever.

How You Can Support the Charity

The Children’s Literacy Charity relies on voluntary donations to provide its life-changing tuition. When it comes to how your support can help: 

• £18 funds a year's worth of literacy resources for a child.
• £36 funds a comprehensive assessment to determine a child's needs.
• £300 funds up to six weeks of expert 1:1 literacy support to help a child catch up with their peers.

This month, we are delighted to be supporting The Children’s Literacy Charity in our April poll, giving them a chance to win 20% of our profits. Help them to continue their mission of closing the literacy gap for disadvantaged children by casting your vote for them today.

Find out more about their work and how you can get involved by visiting their website: https://thechildrensliteracycharity.org.uk/.