St Peter’s Church of England Primary School in Leeds has become the latest recipient of a £1000 donation after submitting a compelling application to the LoveReading4Kids Funding for Schools Scheme.

The fund enables schools to apply for up to £5000 of direct funding to enhance their book stock and further inspire a love of reading for pleasure in their setting. In the outstanding application, School Business Manager Jo Hick explained:

“St Peter's Primary School is situated in one of the fifth most deprived wards in the country with 56% of pupils eligible for FSM (higher than the national average of 22.5%) and 54% of pupils are eligible for Pupil Premium (significantly higher than the national average). Disadvantage is commonplace and the school is located in an area of high deprivation. 21% children have Special Educational Needs/Disabilities (higher than the national average of 16.6%) with a significant number of pupils having language and communication difficulties. The number of children with English as an Additional Language (91%) has continued to increase."

LoveReading4Kids Managing Director Deborah Maclaren had the pleasure of visiting St Peter’s, to help the children unpack a delivery of over 100 books which the school had purchased with their donation. Deborah said of her visit:

"What a beautiful school with the most incredible children. It was such a pleasure to visit and meet the children who welcomed me literally with open arms. The children had browsed LoveReading4Kids and chosen a big bundle of diverse and inclusive reads alongside new books from some of their most beloved authors. I was so impressed with their selections and could see how much the donation meant to the whole school community. It was a day full of joy and bookish love.

This is what our Funding Scheme is all about. Enabling books to be gifted easily to schools who really need them. This is why we purpose built a tech platform to enable this to happen more easily. The LoveReading4Schools Portal sits within our LoveReading4Kids site and serves as a reading for pleasure hub for the 14,000 schools who use it giving teachers and school librarians the tools, advice, content, reading recommendations and funding to support reading for pleasure in their setting. There is even a wishlist function enabling schools to be gifted books they need and are unable to afford. In addition, we have just launched a donate button which enables businesses, organisations or individuals to give schools money for books. Because we need to do more for our children, our schools, and the next generation.”

Commenting on the donation Jo Hicks said:

“We aim to instill a love of reading in all our children and as such, being able to offer a wide variety of reading materials to capture the imagination of ALL children is paramount. This donation will allow us to refresh and update our library - currently we have a high volume of very tired, out of date books that struggle to inspire the children. Being able to enthuse the children with a wide variety of exciting new books will be amazing.”

It’s well-documented that reading for pleasure, and improving reading standards, has a huge impact on children’s wellbeing, academic achievements, and future success. Due to cuts to school funding many children don’t have access to well-stocked libraries and many children don’t get to experience the magic of reading that may well have made you a reader for life.

Inspiring a love of books is one of the best ways to prepare children for a lifetime of learning, and creating curious and engaged readers for life.

And that’s before we even get into the Mental Health Benefits. Research from the National Literacy Trust has shown us that children and young people who like to read are three times more likely to have better mental health than those who don’t.

Reading matters. And books change lives.

The LoveReading4Kids Funding for Schools Scheme was launched in an effort to redress this shortfall in educational funding. Making LoveReading and LoveReading4Kids your go-to bookstores means you can support a local school and give back to kids in your community. Or give to schools in real need with crippling disadvantages. All at no cost to you. In fact, there are only benefits all round.

With 10% off RRPs as standard, LoveReading has a huge selection of books for all ages, across all genres, at competitive prices, with expert reviews, opening extracts and features and collections to help you or the children in your life select which book to read next. With the option to donate 25% of your spend to a school close to your heart, LoveReading has so far delivered £60,000 of funding to schools enabling them to restock their libraries.

If you don’t wish to donate to a specific school or don’t have an affinity with a particular school, a 10% contribution goes into our Funding for Schools Scheme.

To date LoveReading4Kids has had over 750 schools apply, and would love to help all of these schools. As more books are sold via www.lovereading.co.uk and www.lovereading4kids.co.uk and the LoveReading4Kids funding pot grows they will be able to help more and more schools who so desperately need it.

The LoveReading4Kids Funding for Schools Scheme accepts applications from state funded schools in the UK. Primaries, secondaries and early years’ settings are all eligible to apply. For more information, please click here.

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#schoollibraries #readingforpleasure

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