For the past 17 years, volunteers from KPMG have been visiting the school weekly to support the children’s literacy development and providing one-on-one reading support.
After the school day, parents joined in, reading with their children at school for World Book Day.
Usel Basnayake, 4, went to school dressed as Dracula.
‘We’re from Sri Lanka and when he came here, he didn’t speak any English,’ said his dad Saiya.
‘The first thing was reading books, he learned which stories he liked and he quickly picked up English that way.
‘We mostly read books set in a fantasy world.’
Nicole Figgins said that it was a lovely idea allowing parents into school to read with their children.
‘We love reading books together at home, so Freddie was very excited that we get to do it at school, because we only ever do it at home and he loves it,’ she said.
Freddie Figgins, 5, dressed as a Red Arrows’ pilot, loves planes, and brought along his favourite book, 1,000 Airlines in Colour.
This year is also the National Year of Reading.
KPMG has been running the reading project, enabled by Bright Beginnings, with Amherst Primary School since 2009.
‘We come in every Wednesday and read to the children, they also read to us and we help them with any words they get stuck on or they’re not sure of,’ said CDs and KIG senior partner office lead Donna Olliver.
‘It’s a really nice thing to do for us and the children love it, and I think we get as much out of it as the children do.’
KPMG also helps out with the school’s fayres, book sales and school discos.
‘The children were reading a book called the Wild Robot and then we paid for them to go and watch the film so that they could compare the difference between the book and the film, and also learn that just because you’ve watched the film, it doesn’t mean that you’ve read the book,’ said Ms Olliver.
‘For World Book Day, we’ve come in to help with the books after school, meet their parents and maybe do some reading with them.’
‘Personally, I like seeing their little faces, and if they get stuck on a word and then later they come back and read the book again and know the word, I think it’s really sweet.’
Two volunteers from KPMG attend the school each week, but more than 30 members of staff are signed up to the initiative.
Recent reading-speed assessments have demonstrated the impact of the weekly sessions.
Over a five-week period, each child taking part recorded improvements in reading fluency, with increases ranging from 22 to 62 additional words per minute.
Progress examples include pupils moving from 78 to 118 words per minute, and 137 to 165 words per minute.
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