This exciting new UKLA/OU Quality Mark recognises and rewards primary schools that have developed, embedded and enriched their Reading for Pleasure (RfP) culture and ethos with demonstrable impact on staff knowledge and practice, on parents and, most significantly, on young people’s recreational reading.

Achieving the UKLA/OU Quality Mark will position schools as centres of excellence for nurturing young readers who choose to read widely and frequently, within and beyond school. The QM is open to all primary, junior and infant schools in the UK.

Applying for and gaining the UKLA/OU Quality Mark is a supportive year-long process, enabling reflection, evaluation and the gathering of evidence of impact. English leaders will be mentored by an expert in reading for pleasure research and practice, who, through use of the RfP Audit Framework, will help schools decide which of the awards they are able to apply for: silver, gold or platinum.

In 2023-2024, 25 schools will be enabled to work towards the RfP QM.

Professor Michael Rosen, a UKLA Ambassador, said

‘This Quality Mark is a great idea. It gives schools something to aim for and a yardstick by which they can check whether they are delivering a whole school reading for pleasure programme. It will also be an indication to parents, pupils and teachers that a school is making reading for pleasure a priority.’

Professor Teresa Cremin, from The Open University, said:

‘Responsibility, rigour and relevance - the 3 Rs of reading for pleasure are central to this evidence-informed Quality Mark. The bar is high, but schools that can demonstrate the impact of their provision deserve to be recognised for the significant work they are doing to change children’s lives.’

Roger McDonald, UKLA President, said:

‘UKLA is proud to be launching the Reading for Pleasure Quality Mark with The Open University in order to recognise schools who take the business of reading for pleasure seriously and are developing lifelong readers who are engaged and critically reflective.’

Reading for Pleasure

Reading for pleasure makes a difference. Evidence from OECD (2002; 2010) shows that reading enjoyment is more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status). In addition, the OECD (2021) argue that finding ways to engage students in reading and developing the habit of reading has the potential to leverage social change. It is thus a matter of social justice and as the International Literacy Association state: ‘reading for pleasure is the right of every child’ (ILA, 2019, Right 5).

A number of benefits are associated with being a childhood reader who reads widely and frequently.

These include:

• Higher reading attainment scores (McGrane, 2017)

• Enhanced vocabulary (Sullivan and Brown 2015)

• Wider general knowledge (Schugar & Dreher, 2017)

• Better spelling skills (Sullivan and Brown 2015)

• Enhanced well-being (Mak and Fancourt, 2020)

• Enriched narrative writing (Senechal et al., 2018).

However, the recent National Literacy Trust survey of 8–18-year-olds reported the lowest levels of reading for pleasure since their records began in 2005 (Cole et al, 2022), with boys and disadvantaged pupils on FSM representing particular cause for concern. Schools right across the country are thus working to enrich their reading cultures, and to establish and evaluate their provision. Many are looking for coherent evidence informed approaches.

One such approach was identified through research undertaken by the Open University in partnership with the UKLA. This revealed that when teachers widen their knowledge and pleasure in reading children's literature and other texts, and become more aware of their own, and the children's reading practices, they begin to see reading differently. As a consequence, they more effectively built a reading for pleasure pedagogy and strong communities of readers in school (Cremin et al., 2014). Such reading communities and cultures take time to build and embed so that they not only become part of the fabric of the school, but stretch beyond it into homes and the local community (Boyask et al, 2022).

Schools that have begun to develop and sustain their culture of reading in whatever way are welcome to register their interest in applying for the RfP Quality Mark and can attend the Introductory CPD session.

Register your interest and attend the Introductory CPD session

Schools interested in hearing more about the UKLA/OU RfP Quality Mark opportunity, are invited to register for the RfP CPD and QM Introductory Session on Thursday 20th April: 2pm- 4pm.

UKLA members and non-members are all welcome to this session.

The session will:

• Provide research informed CPD on RfP

• Introduce the QM selection process

• Share additional RfP opportunities

To register for the session, follow this link: https://www.trybooking.co.uk/CETK