Our service
VRH is a national charity that recruits, trains and supports reading helpers who volunteer their time to work on a one-to-one basis with children in primary schools.
We currently work with over 1,000 primary schools in England, providing support through 1,700 reading helpers to over 5,000 children each week.
We pride ourselves on providing a low-cost and flexible service to schools by supporting your reading helpers for you. We ask schools to contribute £510 per reading helper for a year. This represents half the actual cost - we fundraise the rest.
This means you can have quality one-to-one reading support in your school for £170 per child, per year.
Where do we work?
VRH operates in areas of deprivation, to reach the children who need us most. Please check the VRH branch finder to see whether our service covers your area. Our service broadly covers:
- Manchester and surrounding areas
- Birmingham and surrounding areas
- Leeds/Bradford and surrounding areas
- Liverpool
- Northamptonshire
- London
- Kent
Why use our reading helpers?
Our reading helpers are dedicated to working with your school to help those children who need extra support with their reading. We recruit reliable individuals who can plan their own reading sessions and provide a relaxed learning environment for the children. Our reading helpers are:
- Dedicated volunteers who commit for at least a year
- Fully vetted - we complete an enhanced CRB check and take up two references
- Suited to the role - we ask them to complete a robust application process
- Trained - all our reading helpers complete 9 hours of training before we place them
- Supported - we provide on-going training and support so you don't have to worry
Our training and support for the reading helpers encourages them to stay in their role for longer, meaning continuity for you. Where a reading helper does move on, we will recruit and place another for you.
Impact
Our reading helpers stay with the same three children for typically three to four terms. They build up a rapport with the children and work at the child's pace. This allows the child to build their reading confidence and then make progress.
We have over 37 years' experience and have perfected our model over this period to ensure we get results. In 2009/10,
- 96% of the children we helped saw an increase in their reading confidence
- 96% of the children we helped showed an improved attitude towards reading
- 96% of the children we helped showed an improvement in overall achievement
What our reading helpers do
- Each reading helper works with at least three children in your school
- They visit twice a week, spending 30 minutes with each child on a one-to-one basis
- We provide a box of books and games for them to use in the sessions
- They provide a friendly and safe learning environment for the children
- They work outside the classroom, away from peer pressure
- They build a rapport with each child, building their confidence and helping them succeed
- They provide reliable, consistent support - seeing each child for an average of three to four terms
Cost
We ask all the schools we work with to make a financial contribution towards our costs. The contribution is £510 per reading helper for a year's support. This covers approximately a third of the cost to us of recruiting, training and supporting a reading helper over a year. We cover the remainder of our costs through various fundraising streams.
Each reading helper works with at least three children (in some cases more, but the cost to you remains £510 regardless of how many children the reading helper works with).
Each child is seen for an hour in total per week, which equates to less than £5 per hour* for one-to-one literacy support.
*Calculation based on a reading helper supporting three children over 35 weeks in the academic year.
How to sign up
- Check the VRH branch finder to see if we run our service in your area
- Call your local branch or contact our central office on 020 7729 4087 (or info [at] vrh [dot] org [dot] uk (email us)) to let us know you're interested
- Your local branch will then contact you to discuss your needs
New schools that sign up to our scheme are asked to sign our Service level agreement.
