The ‘Year of Reading’ celebrates successful £10,000 extension funding bid.

We are thrilled to announce that our ‘Year of Reading’ project has successfully secured a further £10,000 grant from Gloucestershire County Council’s (GCC) Levelling Up Disadvantage fund, to enhance our collaborative work schools across the South Cotswolds. This significant funding boost will enable the valuable work that has taken place so far to continue, positively impacting on more pupils and their attitudes towards reading.

The Year of Reading project (YOR), launched in May 2023 (read more...), is committed to ensuring children and young people discover a lifelong love of reading. Our aim is for them to become confident, considered readers who read for pleasure. To meet our aims, we have worked together this year and promoted the joy of reading through a variety of engaging enrichment events. Additionally, each school has undertaken an action research project which has focused on evidence-based research around the teaching of Reading. Our YOR project leaders have then implemented these projects within their schools. With the extension funding, we will be able to: 

Share best practice: The grant will provide teachers from within the ‘Year of Reading’ further secondment time. This will enable them to work alongside other colleagues and learn from the best practices of others.

 

Reading Enrichment: Part of the funding will enable us to further enrich the pupils’ reading diet outside of the classroom through author visits, literature workshops, and local events. These visits and workshops will inspire our pupils, offering them unique insights into new literature and storytelling.

 

Professional Development: To complement the work we have already undertaken this year, we can now provide additional training for all teachers. This will enable high-quality teaching of reading across all our schools.

 

In addition to this, we can use the funding to assess those children who are working below age-related expectations in their Reading. Using the New Group Reading Tests by GL Assessment, we can identify gaps in the pupils' reading skills to get to the root cause of their barriers. Subsequently, our schools can then support these children, using effective strategies.

 

‘The success of this funding bid is a testament to the hard work and dedication of everyone in our ‘Year of Reading’ team. Working with other local schools this year has shown the importance of collaboration and that, through coming together, we can make an even bigger impact on our children. We extend our heartfelt thanks to all of the schools participating in the project, those who contributed to the bid, and to GCC, the funding body, for recognising the value of our ‘Year of Reading.’ Chiquita Henson, Trust Lead (CEO).

 

As we move forward, we are excited about the positive impact this grant will have on the pupils’ educational experiences. By improving children’s outcomes in Reading, we are not only enhancing their literacy skills but also opening doors to lifelong learning of the wider curriculum.

 

'We look forward to sharing our progress and celebrating the achievements throughout our next chapter. Stay tuned for updates and please join us in making this initiative a resounding success!' Rachael Scott, School Improvement Lead (Primary) and YOR lead, Corinium Education Trust.