Reading & Number Partners

Weekly rewarding corporate volunteering opportunity for staff interested in supporting children with their key skills at a local school.

Our Reading and Number Partners programmes offer meaningful team building opportunities for your staff, as well as helping you meet your social value targets and engage purposefully with young people in the local community and helping to shape the workforce of the future.

Ablaze connects your business with a local school looking for 1:1 support for their pupils with their key skills in reading and maths. Your business volunteers visit the local school for weekly face to face sessions supporting the same child(ren) and developing a meaningful partnership.

Pupils who work with an Ablaze Reading or Number Partner increase their attainment levels and improve their communication skills. This adult attention boosts their confidence and self-esteem.

A smiling business volunteer helps a pupil with her reading.

Fact: The cost of illiteracy to the UK economy is estimated to be over £80 billion a year (The Economic & Social Cost of Illiteracy: A Snapshot of Illiteracy in a Global Context, World Literacy Foundation)

Fact: The average company employing 1,000 people or more could save £500 per person if the basic skills of employees were improved (Basic Skills Agency)

Participating in our Reading and Number partners programme not only helps local children, but helps us build a nation of literate, confident children, who are the workforce of the future. This isn’t just common sense but makes business sense too!

Reading and Number Partners – how it works

Ablaze will:

Partner you with a local school; broker and manage the relationship; support with volunteer recruitment and DBS checks; deliver volunteer training; hold regular review meetings; and evaluate your impact each year

Reading Partner training covers phonics, strategies to help children with their reading; safeguarding and child protection training. Number Partners training covers mental maths strategies as well as safeguarding and child protection.

Businesses report that participating in our volunteering programmes has impacted staff personal development by:

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Increasing their skills in time management, supervision and communication

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Providing team bonding & networking opportunities

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Promoting employee engagement and well being

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Developing transferable skills

A volunteer Reading Partner is showing a book to two boys sat next to him.

Our school partners report that pupils confidence grows following sessions with our Reading Partner volunteers, and their comprehension and ability to master literacy improves at a greater speed than it would without this additional support.

Children who participate with the Number Partners programme work in small groups, developing team work skills as well as their mental maths confidence. You do not need to be a mathematical genius to make a difference to a child’s number confidence. Volunteers support children through playing a range of fun, targeted maths board games.

We ask businesses taking part in our programmes to pay a small contribution towards the costs of setting up and running their partnership. This contribution covers some of the costs of training and DBS checking volunteers; managing the relationship between the business and the school; and reporting to the business each year evaluating the impact of the partnership.

Contact us to find out more.