Prime Minister says "Reading Matters"

David Cameron reads with Divine Obijiaku: from Evening Standard Website

There is a nice article on the Evening Standard website about the Prime Minister's visit to a London school. He was checking out the Get London Reading campaign. It's a very similar model to ours here at Reading Matters; using Reading Volunteers to improve literacy.


To hammer home the point here is a quote

Reading matters for two simple reasons, he told pupils. "If we don't learn to read properly, then everything else in education is a closed book. But above and beyond that, reading is a joy and a pleasure and it is for life."

Horner Brothers and Reading Matters win Creating Better Future Awards with Yorkshire Forward Result

I'm really please to say Reading Matters won a Creating Better Future Awards with Yorkshire Forward earlier this month. The award is in recognition for our partnership with Horner Brothers Print Group.

Since 2008 Horner Brothers staff have been attending Brinsworth Comprehensive School to carry out reading sessions with pupils. It has been a brilliant success for everyone involved and I have been really pleased to be involved. Long may it continue!

The awards were presented by Michelle Mone OBE, she said:

“The winners have all demonstrated inspirational partnership working, and their awards recognise the dedication and passion of those involved in each project.”

SUFC and PwC - best book forward

The title stands for Sheffield United Football Club and PricewaterhouseCoopers. I was hoping to return after my half term break to gloriously report that we are working with a Premier league club. Sadly this did quite pan out, and Sheffield United will remain in the Championship, but more importantly some of their staff and their corporate partners will be attending reading sessions at some schools close to the SUFC Academy this term, as part of their best book forward project.

We had a excellent training session at the swanky PwC offices in Sheffield, it was great to have such a diverse bunch of mentors, I am sure they will all do really well. The next step is to prepare some specific materials and get them going!

Horner Brothers Print Group Staff at Brinsworth Comprehensive

At the end of last week I visited Brinsworth Comprehensive School, I met lots of staff and pupils from the school in the Library, they were all very enthusiastic about the Reading Matters sessions. The volunteer reading mentors at Brinsworth are all staff from Horner Brothers Print Group (HBPG) based not far away from the school. It is a really good project building a real sense of community between the school and the business community.

We have written a press release to celebrate the relationship, here are a couple of quotes which I think sum it up.

Christine Mullan, HR Director at HBPG: "Staff have loved helping the children at Brinsworth School. They get enormous satisfaction from the knowledge they are really helping to support and inspire young people in our community."

Jill Ford, Assistant Head Teacher at Brinsworth Comprehensive School:"The young people who the Horner Brothers volunteers work with have gained confidence through the reading activities and developing a friendly relationship with another adult."

We hope the press release will lead to a bit of coverage in the media. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes such as this are quite big news at the moment so we will see how it goes.

From Horner Brothers staff at Brinsworth Comprehensive