TWO pupils at the Marlborough School in Woodstock have been praised for giving up their spare time to help younger children develop their literacy skills.

Ilona Harding-Roberts and Juliet Coe, both 15, spent three months working with year five and year six pupils at Stonesfield Primary School.

They set up a club, called Look Who’s Talking, aimed at developing literacy through talk, and worked with 12 children in after-school sessions.

The girls came up with the idea as part of the volunteering section of their Duke of Edinburgh Awards programme.

Ilona, from Charlbury, said: “We thought ‘what could we do to help other schools?’.

“As we’re both quite good at English, we wondered ‘what can we do to improve literacy and help people?’.”

Supervised by the primary school’s deputy headteacher, Beth Binnian, they planned the sessions each week and helped the children in the group to develop talks about something special to them.

At the end of the programme earlier this month, a special session was held where the primary school pupils stood up in front of friends and family to give their talk, perform a poem and read an excerpt from their favourite book.

Ilona said: “We have both learned a lot. Working with the children was brilliant and seeing their progress was amazing.”

Juliet, from Upper Heyford, added: “I have really enjoyed the whole experience. It’s something that I will remember for a long time.

“It has been great seeing each person gain confidence when reading aloud and it was a delight working with each of them and helping them gain confidence.

“They made amazing progress, especially over the last month.”

Stonesfield Primary School was given a notice to improve by Ofsted in January last year, but was rated good when inspectors returned this January.

Mrs Binnian said that Look Who’s Talking had been a “really beneficial process”.

She added: “In school we have a focus on talk for writing through our literacy lessons, so the collaboration was fantastic.

“The girls took real responsibility for running the club, planning it and structuring it.

“The younger children have benefited enormously from having older children working with them and they have learned so much from each other.”

She said she believed Juliet and Ilona would make “fantastic” teachers if they decided to pursue it as a career.