The National Year of Reading: Our Pledge
- eperks1
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 22 hours ago
The National Year of Reading has begun, a nationwide campaign to shine a light on the vital role reading plays in children’s lives – and on the amazing people who help to make it happen.
At Schoolreaders, we are proud to support children in developing their confidence, fluency and enjoyment of reading through regular one-to-one sessions with volunteers. As the National Year of Reading begins, we have pledged to deliver 1.5 million reading sessions in 2026.
Each year, we carry out research with our volunteers and partner schools to understand how Schoolreaders works in practice. The end of year survey goes out to all schools with a Schoolreader in place, and all volunteers actively reading in school. From the results provided to us by a sample of almost 500 schools and 1,500 volunteers in 2024/25, we can get a good picture of how often volunteers typically go into school, how long they read with each child, and how many children they support each week.
Questions include:
- How often volunteers go into school
- How long they spend reading with each child
- How many children they usually read with each week
This annual research gives us a reliable picture of what Schoolreaders volunteering looks like across the country, though of course every school is slightly different.
From this research, we know that the average Schoolreaders volunteer reads with 10 children each week, spending approximately 11 minutes with each child. We also know that our volunteers spend an average of 2.7 hours in school each week.
To calculate our reading session totals, we look at how many volunteers are active each month and apply a conservative average based on our research findings. This approach ensures that our figures are realistic and reflect what is happening in schools throughout the year.
By tracking our numbers this way, we can confidently report on our impact while keeping our focus on what matters most: children receiving vital one-to-one reading support from a supportive adult.
Throughout 2026, we’ll be tracking our progress towards 1.5 million reading sessions and sharing updates along the way. Every session contributes to that total – and every volunteer plays a part.
Keep an eye on our National Year of Reading page here to see our live tracker, which will update throughout the year to show how many reading sessions our volunteers have provided to date.
