Reading volunteers programme

For Primary and Secondary Schools

Through the support of reading volunteers, Handsworth Association of schools has developed the Reading  Volunteer programme to help children struggling with their literacy skills to become confident and able readers, to access the education they deserve and achieve their potential. 

Why PARTICIPATE? 

• Being able to read impacts on learning and achievement in every area of the curriculum and children  who struggle encounter barriers to learning throughout each day in school.  
• Weak reading skills also prevent children from reading for pleasure and enjoying a world of fiction, not to mention reducing their ability to cope and be independent in the real world.  
• Additional support at an early age can help decrease the number of children who experience  difficulties with literacy later in school and reduce possible costly consequences (truancy, exclusion and, later in life, unemployment, poor health and involvement with the criminal justice system).  
• Many of the children in our local primary schools struggle with their reading and risk falling behind  national literacy levels and being denied real life chances and choices when they move to high school  and beyond. Schools work extremely hard to help these children but are not always able to provide  the individual time required. 
• We know that many of the children don’t receive any support at home. 

For Primary schools:  

• Enrich children’s learning and help every child fulfil their potential. 
• Make the best use of time and resources and demonstrate value for money. 
• Give children the time to discover the pleasure of reading. 
• We work closely with your school to understand the needs of each child. 
• We provide impact data gathered by our trained reading helpers to show progress. 
• We use conversation and play to help children along the literacy path. 
• We introduce the child to an extended range of materials. 

For Secondary Schools  

This project is extremely popular with the secondary schools as it provides a volunteer service opportunity for students that can be used as part of their UCAS/ college application form.  

Through this programme, not only do students give back to their community, gain valuable volunteering experiences, they also learn new life-long skills such as how to speak with a child, how to teach a new skill to a child, patience, perseverance and much more.

For more detailed information about this programme, including how it works, the training/delivery timetable and the outcomes we achieve, please see our full brochure: [file should be available to download on this page.