Our vision is of a world in which being able to read is a basic right. Reading is something that comes naturally to many children but not for some as one in every five boys and one in every ten girls leave primary school unable to read.

Reading Quest, a registered charity based in Oxford, was set up to make sure that everyone gets the chance to enjoy literacy and to become lifelong lovers of reading. Since we were started in 1997 by founder, Penny Tyack, a primary school teacher, almost 4,000 children in 96 schools in Oxfordshire have been helped by more than 375 trained Reading Quest tutors.

Our Aims

Our aim is to give every child an equal chance through reading to think, write and enjoy learning.

In brief, we provide:

• Dynamic teaching for the most disadvantaged children which enables pupils to function effectively in the classroom and for them to grow in confidence and motivation.
• Support and guidance for parents/carers in terms of home literacy, plus a regular family library service for pupils and their families to explore literacy together.
• Specialised initial literacy training for school staff in how to use the RQ model.
• Trained core literacy tutors to work in schools that request our help.
• On-going refresher training to both core tutors and trained school staff in order to maintain and improve their literacy teaching skills.
• Support and guidance to parents/carers to help their children with literacy in the home.
• Accreditation to professionals in how to use the RQ programme effectively.

The Reading Quest method is informed by a tried-and-tested model known as Reading Recovery, created by New Zealander Marie Clay, and is rooted in the National Curriculum. We like to encourage families to get involved as well. Parents/carers are invited to watch a lesson and they go home inspired to read and play with their children.

Why are we needed?

The key time for a child to learn to read is between years 6 to 7. If a pupil is unable to grasp literacy in Year 2, they start to fall behind their peers and can feel turned off by education. Life is tough if you can’t read and you get no literacy support at home as the research below illustrates.

• Illiteracy is costing business and the UK taxpayer £10 billion a year with one in 5 adults in Britain is ‘functionally illiterate’, finding it hard to gain employment or cope in society.
• Over half of the 75,000 people in prison gained no qualifications at school and suffer from poor literacy skills (British Dyslexia Association).

The KPMG Charitable Trust report (2006) on the costs of illiteracy, reports that:

• There is a distinct relationship between poverty and literacy skills, with children who are eligible for free school meals being over twice as likely to only achieve a low level 3 in SATS results in English
• Children with poor reading skills entering secondary school were four times more likely to truant at school.
• At age 37, over a fifth of men who were long- term unemployed or sick, had low literacy levels.
• Literacy problems were the main barrier to full-time employment for women aged over 30 than social exclusion risk factors.