Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Every child now reads, counts and writes
Two new government funded schemes have been launched in English Primary Schools this academic year as part of a drive to address the needs of children who struggle to progress in literacy and numeracy.
Every Child a Writer and Every Child Counts join the existing Every Child a Reader Scheme launched last year. All three schemes are part of the government's strategy laid out in the Children's Plan and in it's response to the Rose Review, published in 2006. All three schemes use a form of personalised learning as the core approach.
The Every Child a Reader Scheme was a government initiative in partnership with the Every Child a Chance Trust, a business backed charity established to promote educational opportunity in socially deprived community sectors. The scheme has been running in nine local authorities providing one-to-one support to children struggling to establish basic reading skills. The personalised support is given by specially trained lead teachers. An evaluation of the scheme conducted by The Institute of Education found that children on the 20 week scheme made significant progress with an average progress of 21 months in reading age.
It is this success which has led to the government expanding the scheme nationwide from this September. Each local authority in England will select and train five leading teachers to implement the programme which will provide intensive one-to-one support to 100,000 children by 2011.
The Every Child Counts scheme will also be run in partnership with Every Child a Chance Trust.
The scheme will provide one -to -one intensive support for children struggling to develop maths skills at age 6, starting with 21 authorities this month and reaching 30,000 children by 2011. As with the reading scheme, lead teachers will be trained to implement the programme.
The Every Child a Writer scheme is a DCSF initiative to run alongside the other two, focusing on providing extra, intensive and personalised support to children aged 7 and 8. This year's Pilot will support 2,500 children in 135 schools with a national roll-out programme to follow. It is expected to be reaching 45,000 children by 2011.
The Every Child A Chance website has links to the Read and Count Schemes.