At Ridgeway Education Trust, we are passionate about encouraging a love of reading in pupils by ensuring access to a wide range of books as well as cultivating book-related experiences to entertain and inspire them. The rationale for this is the plethora of research that shows far-reaching benefits of Reading for Pleasure, including:

1. Research from the National Literacy Trust has shown us that children and young people who like to read are three times more likely to have better mental health than those who don’t. In fact, reading for just 6 minutes has been shown to reduce stress by up to 68%, making it one of the most effective way to ease tension in the body and the mind!
2. Children who read are more likely to do better at school and make more progress across the curriculum.
3. Children who read are more likely to develop empathy and creativity.
4. Reading for pleasure is a more powerful factor in life achievement than socio-economic background.

Our Reading for Pleasure lead for the Ridgeway Education Trust is Leoni Barnes and the strategy for encouraging our pupils to develop and maintain a love of reading includes author visits, mentoring from older students and participation in local and national book awards. You can read more about this in The Reading Round-Up, the Ridgeway Education Trust’s Reading for Pleasure newsletter.

You might find the following links helpful in helping to develop your children as readers:

Tips and advice from Book Trust

Book recommendations from Book Trust

‘The Story Corner’ magazine with tips to encourage reading

Advice for encouraging teens to read

 

Primary Patron of Reading

We are very excited to announce that the award winning author Jo Cotterill will be the Patron of Reading for our RET primary schools for this academic year (2024-25).

 

As part of this, Jo will be providing books and activities for our pupils each term, based around a total of three Focus Days over the course of the year. Through these, pupils will learn about empathy, positive mental health and healthy communication.

Jo will also be visiting one of our primary schools on each of the Focus Days and working directly with pupils there.