I WOULD like to congratulate the Oxford Mail for its support of the Reading Campaign.
But as I have pointed out in many letters to this paper, the results attributed to this initiative were flawed, as credit for Key Stage Two improvement was put down to recent work with Key Stage One students and, bearing in mind the lag on these results, we must wait a little longer for those benefits to come through.
So what has happened? Before the Reading Campaign, schools themselves realised they needed to do something, so they stepped up and also recruited Assisted Reading for Children (ARCh) to help their staff and parents to improve reading – the Reading Campaign came on board later, but has tried to claim all the improvements are due to their initiative. We will see that benefit later.
Now for a review. ARCh have well over 200 volunteers in over 100 schools, they work with three students for half an hour each, twice a week for a year. They not only work on reading, but on improving the confidence of the students. The Reading Campaign works on reading, but only for 10 weeks. As an ARCh volunteer, I can assure your readers that building a relationship with the students can take a little time.
What next? The funding is to continue, but I believe it is time to look at only one initiative and the number crunchers should look at best value.
JIM YOUNG, Blythe Place, Bicester
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