£5 million funding for reading programmes across Wales
The Welsh Government is funding reading programmes across Wales, as well as a package of measures to improve reading and oracy skills.
The £5m funding will provide thousands more books for school children across Wales, helping them to improve key reading and speaking skills at a young age, alongside a targeted scheme of reading support focusing on early years and disadvantaged learners.
The programme will include 72,000 additional books to reception children at schools across Wales, 3,600 letterbox club packs, books and training for practitioners to support learning, and one box of 50 books to every state school in Wales.
The Minister also confirmed a package of measures, including working with teacher education providers and consortia to carry out a review of provision to ensure practitioners continue to get the high quality support that they need across Wales.
The National Network, which is a practitioner-led body to support schools with the implementation of the new curriculum, will prioritise reading and oracy in the spring, to facilitate high-quality teaching and consider the role of phonics in the new curriculum the development of a toolkit to support teachers to develop their classroom practice.
There will also be a review of language screening tools, undertaken by Cardiff Metropolitan University and the Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit, to help practitioners identify issues in listening, understanding and speaking skills.
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