đź“° Adult Literacy News Summary

Reading charity appealing for volunteers

01-Sep-2025 - UK

The charity Read Easy is looking for more volunteers to take one-to-one sessions with people in Kettering and Corby. The organisation says 2.4 million people in the UK are unable to read. Janet Batson, one of the current volunteers, said she was very proud of the progress her latest student had made.

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Queen Camilla’s Reading Room teams up with domestic violence survivors’ charity

30-Aug-2025 - UK

The partnership hopes to use books to support the healing process. For many of us reading is an escape – look into another world, taking us out of our own. That is why Queen Camilla’s Reading Room is teaming up with a charity supporting domestic abuse survivors, in order to help them recover after the ordeal of their experiences.

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Local adult literacy programs face uncertain future as federal government dismantles the U.S. Department of Education

29-Aug-2025 - USA

Literacy Volunteers is one of two local adult education programs bracing for an uncertain future as U.S. Secretary of Education and former wrestling magnate Linda McMahon works to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education on President Donald Trump’s order.

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NCHD Establishes Adult Literacy Centres For Prisoners

29-Aug-2025 - Pakistan

The National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) Sargodha has set up two adult literacy centers in the District Jail to equip illiterate inmates with basic education

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Reform councillor closes five Derbyshire adult education centres without consultation

29-Aug-2025 - UK

The Reform-run Derbyshire County Council is closing five adult education centres without any public consultation following a private meeting. Cllr Jack Bradley, Reform’s cabinet member for education, has unilaterally decided at a closed-doors meeting to shut five adult community education centres in Ashbourne, Matlock, Middleton-by-Wirksworth, Shirebrook and Long Eaton. This comes two months after Cllr Bradley also opted to close two centres in Alfreton and Glossop, also without public or user consultation.

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Read Easy celebrates 10 years helping adults learn in Torbay

27-Aug-2025 - UK

An organisation which changes the lives of adults by helping them to read is celebrating 10 years in Torbay. Read Easy UK is the only national organisation in the country which provides a volunteer-led reading coaching programme for adults. Read Easy Torbay and South Devon’s current volunteer coaches, management team and readers were joined by Mandy Woodard, who started the group 10 years ago, retired volunteers and successful readers to mark the special occasion.

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Adult education teachers to stage march over job losses

27-Aug-2025 - Ireland

The Adult Education Teachers Organisation says that people in their first three years of employment have been laid off over the summer, as were other workers who lost their jobs in September of last year. After three years of employment workers gain rights that makes their jobs more secure.

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More than 6,500 London school children have attended story telling events to inspire reading

26-Aug-2025 - UK

More than 6,500 children from across the capital have taken part in storytelling sessions designed to inspire a love of reading. The year’s initiative comes at a crucial time, as new research from the National Literacy Trust reveals only one in three (32.7%) children and young adults aged 8–18 read for pleasure.

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Florida's Adult Literacy Ranks Among Nation's Lowest: 1 in 5 Adults Lack Basic Reading Skills

23-Aug-2025 - USA

Despite decades of reform and billions in education spending, nearly one in five Florida adults lacks basic reading skills. Can targeted investment and community engagement turn the page?

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The death of reading is a civilisational catastrophe

21-Aug-2025 - UK

Researchers at the University of Florida and University College London have found that, in America, reading for leisure has collapsed by 40 per cent in just two decades. In Britain, according to the National Literacy Trust, the percentage of children who say they enjoy reading has plummeted by more than a third, while the number aged between eight and 18 who read daily has been cut in half. The verdict is in: books have lost to phones.

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