đź“° Adult Literacy News Summary
FareShare Midlands Celebrates I-Can Programme Impact
08-May-2026 - UK
FareShare Midlands is celebrating the powerful impact of its pioneering I-Can employability programme, delivered as part of the PURE (Partnership for Urban Employment and Recovery) initiative commissioned by Birmingham City Council. At its heart, I-Can has been about more than just finding work. By creating a warm, inclusive and supportive environment, the team has enabled individuals to grow in confidence, improve literacy and job readiness, gain hands-on experience in warehouse and kitchen settings, and connect with real employment opportunities. This tailored, person-centred approach has led to 98 people securing jobs, with a further 21 participants gaining employment within FareShare Midlands itsel
Read moreDo we absorb information better on paper, rather than screens? It depends on the screen
07-May-2026 - Australia
The Swedish government recently announced it was moving from the classroom use of digital devices back to physical books. It cited concerns over declining test scores and increasing screen time. Are these concerns well founded? And what does the science of reading say about the possible consequences of reading on digital devices versus books?
Read moreFinding the Meaning of a Word Can Be Its Own Reward
05-May-2026 - UK
You’re reading a book and come across a word you don’t know. You keep going, and a few lines later, it clicks. You realise what the word must mean. There’s a small, satisfying moment of clarity—an "aha" moment. Our research suggests that this pleasant feeling may be part of the mechanism that makes learning work. It would be impossible to learn all the words we know from direct instruction. Rather, one way we learn new words is through its context. We hear a new word in conversation, or encounter it in a sentence, and gradually infer its meaning
Read moreCumbrian MP praises online reading scheme for schools
01-May-2026 - UK
Josh MacAlister, the MP for Whitehaven and Workington, visited Distington Community School last week to see an online literacy charity's work in the field. The scheme, run by national literacy charity Chapter One, pairs children aged five to eight with corporate employees for 30-minute, one-on-one reading sessions once a week.
Read moreLibrary extended to Henley primary
29-Apr-2026 - UK
A charity in Henley has extended its digital library service to a primary school. ELibraries for Schools, which aims to give children better access to books through a digital library, has expanded its service to Year 5 and 6 pupils at Trinity Primary School, in Vicarage Road. The e-library operated by the charity is shared with nine pilot schools across the UK.
Read more"Relentless" focus on literacy undermines reading for pleasure, says report
28-Apr-2026 - UK
The “relentless” focus on measuring literacy progress in schools has “pushed reading for pleasure to the margins”, according to a new report. “Parents and schools both recognise that reading for pleasure matters, but their understandable focus on literacy skills is actively undermining it,” found the study, which analysed survey data on reading trends among UK children, drawing on data from HarperCollins, NielsenIQ and The Reading Agency
Read moreBolton adults learn to read with Read Easy support
27-Apr-2026 - UK
More people in Bolton have started being able to read thanks to the local branch of national organisation Read Easy. The charity works across the country, helping the 2.4 million adults nationally who cannot read or who struggle to read. In Bolton, there are around 20,000 adults with reading difficulties like this. The Bolton Read Easy group, set up last year, works with volunteers to train them to become reader coaches in two, three-hour modules.
Read moreAWS Summit London - how monday.com hit $1m ARR in ten weeks, and what a children's literacy charity has in common with it
27-Apr-2026 - UK
Frankie Smith, Interim CEO of Bookmark Reading Charity, needed at least 300 more reading volunteers to meet the demand from UK schools – and recruiting them was never going to be quick. Every volunteer has to be vetted and trained, and that process exists for good reason. Amichay Even Chen, Product Lead at monday AI, had 250,000 customers asking for features that never made the roadmap because they were too complex to build. Both organizations have found a way forward with AWS.
Read moreVoice notes are massive in some countries but not the UK - here's why
26-Apr-2026 - UK
In places like India, Mexico, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates, voice notes are almost matching the popularity of written texts as the preferred form of electronic communication. But curiously, the truth is that compared to many places, Britain never seems to have quite caught the voice note bug. Prof Kathryn Hardy, a professor of Sociology at Ashoka University in Sonipat, Haryana, told me it was "extremely plausible" that voice messaging was particularly popular in rural communities and areas where written literacy is lower. "We've seen so many technologies taken up in rural communities just instantaneously, because they do bypass literacy requirements," she said. "This seems like the most obvious use of voice notes, to get around the problem of not just literacy but fluency."
Read moreSchools Programme announced for Edinburgh International Book Festival 2026
26-Apr-2026 - UK
The Edinburgh International Book Festival is launching its Schools Programme as Scotland marks the National Year of Reading in 2026. The Festival, which runs from Monday 24 to Friday 28 August this year, will feature a week of author events, creative activity and classroom resources designed to support teachers, school librarians and home educators at the start of the academic year.
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