Volunteer to listen to children read in local primary schools

Schoolreaders is a charity who improve children's life chances by providing volunteers, for free, to give one-on-one reading practice to children in primary schools.

A large proportion of children leaving primary school are unable to read to the expected standard. One of the reasons is that children are not receiving enough one-on-one reading practice. Schoolreaders helps address this by providing volunteers to listen to children read in primary schools.

Volunteers are carefully matched to the best local school for them.  Your postcode will allow Schoolreaders to try and match you up with a primary school near to where you live.

Schoolreaders is a free service for primary schools and all our volunteers give their time freely. We regret we cannot reimburse expenses so try to match volunteers with schools as local as possible. Each potential volunteer completes an application form online or by post and agrees to the Schoolreaders code of conduct.

The partner school who the volunteer is paired with completes an enhanced DBS check at the school's expense. The school provide guidance and training specific to their school and your activities. Each school uses volunteers differently, so some volunteers see the same few children each week, while others get to spend time with every member of the class over a term.

Skills

No particular qualifications, but Schoolreaders need to enjoy spending time with children, have a good grasp of written and spoken English and be able to commit to attend school weekly during term time for a minimum of 1 year.