We are delighted to announce that The Children’s Literacy Charity is one of seven not-for-profit organisations chosen by The Mercers’ Company to receive significant funding as part of their Young People and Education Programme’s Early Years Special Initiative.
Building on our belief in early intervention, our project will develop a new specialist language and communication intervention for nursery and reception children who have poor language skills. As well as equipping them with the literacy building blocks, the programme will help ready children for the effective acquisition of phonics and support their social and emotional development.
Julie Taylor, the charity’s Education Lead, said: “Through our Literacy Lab work we see children increasingly arriving at school with very poor language skills and struggling with attention, concentration and listening”.
Recent research shows that children from a disadvantaged background start reception nearly five months behind children from higher-income backgrounds and language development suffers if there is an absence of talk and interaction at home or limited availability of engagement with books.
“Our Early Years project will use specially trained tutors to deliver a structured programme designed to improve language and communication skills for the children who need the most help engaging them with the magical world of books and helping them develop a lifelong love of reading.”
The Children’s Literacy Charity Trustee Jenny Thomson, Professor of Language and Literacy, University of Sheffield, commented:
“We know that strong speech and language around the time of school entry is critical to a child’s literacy trajectory and we also increasingly know that developing an intrinsic motivation to read is what will sustain progress over time, and is a key limiting factor for a lot of children and young people. In targeting early intervention AND interest in reading, I feel confident this project’s evidence informed approach will deliver powerful outcomes and have a significant impact on a child’s future literacy potential”.
CEO Isabel Greenwood added: “Early intervention was a founding ethos for this charity and building on the knowledge and expertise gained through our existing literacy programmes, we believe our Early Years project could make a significant contribution to developing literacy skills and closing the attainment gap as soon as possible”.
“We are looking forward to working closely with Early Years practitioners in our partner schools and working collaboratively with the team at The Mercers’ Company and with our fellow grantees.”
The Children’s Literacy Charity is part of the second cohort in the second phase of The Mercers’ Company Early Years Special Initiative and each organisation will receive grants of up to £300,000 over a four-year period through The Charity of Sir Richard Whittington for which the Mercers Company is Corporate Trustee.
The other grantees in this cohort are: Auditory Verbal UK; Chickenshed; Discover Children’s Story Centre; Home-Start London; National Literacy Trust and Peeple.
