The Leicestershire Cares education team are looking forward to relaunching the Go for Reading project for 2022 after it has been put on hold during the pandemic due to schools’ closures and staff shortages amongst our business members. Our volunteer reading mentor programme aims to encourage a love of reading and improve reading skills amongst reluctant readers in Years 7 and 8. Business volunteers attend a school once a week (term time) to read with two students for 30 minutes each.
In 2019-2020 academic year, 35 businesses volunteered in 10 schools, supporting 112 students and delivered a total of 195 one-hour sessions before the national lockdown in March. In the last full academic year that the project ran, the students involved increased their reading age by an average of 13 months, with 7% improving by at least 77%.
We are confident that this is the time to relaunch and rebuild the project and we aim to provide as many Secondary education settings as possible, across the city and county, with volunteer reading coaches to support students with their reading.
My reading partner helps me to improve my reading so that I can help others in the future
The time the students spent with their volunteers has been invaluable in increasing their confidence in both reading and in communicating independently with an adult. The volunteers were enthusiastic and professional and worked to build good relationships with the students.
Lutterworth High School, who joined the project in September 2019
If you are a school or a business that would like to be involved in the Go for Reading project please contact helen@leicestershirecares.co.uk