When Hamza sat down with his volunteer for the first time, he didn't know that a shared copy of Harry Potter would transform his relationship with reading. He was one of 46,907 children across 2,566 UK primary schools last year who discovered, through the patient attention of a trained volunteer, that reading could be for him—not something done to him, but with him.
The gap between children who have a reading champion at home and those who don't is widening. Nearly half of parents don't regularly read with their children, constrained by time, confidence, or access to books. For children without that everyday literacy anchor, a weekly session with a volunteer often becomes the only structured reading moment in their lives. This matters enormously: without it, struggling readers fall further behind, and the impact ripples far beyond school gates into their confidence, their aspirations, their sense of possibility.
Last year, across The Literacy Link partnership—a coalition of four leading literacy charities including Chapter One, Coram Beanstalk, and Schoolreaders—9,832 trained volunteers stepped up to fill this gap. Together, they delivered 464,895 hours of one-to-one reading support, a staggering investment of human time and care. What did that look like in concrete outcomes? Ninety-six percent of teachers noticed an increase in reading confidence among children in the programme. Eighty-six percent saw improvements in reading skills. Seventy-three percent observed children reading more often—not because they were forced to, but because something had shifted in how these young readers saw themselves.
The transformation extends deeper than test scores. Teachers reported that 84% of children showed improved reading fluency, 67% demonstrated better comprehension, and 94% developed stronger communication and oracy skills. One educator captured it perfectly: "All of the children have looked forward to their sessions. We must congratulate the volunteers on the fantastic, supportive, positive and professional relationships that they have created with the pupils." That relationship—an adult who shows up, listens, and believes in you—is often what children need most.
Yet demand continues to outpace supply. Schools across the country are hungry for more volunteer support than they can secure. Bookmark, one of the Literacy Link partners, estimates it needs around 25% more volunteers simply to meet current demand from schools. With education budgets stretched impossibly thin, schools cannot hire additional reading support staff. The only realistic path forward is more volunteers willing to commit a few hours each week.
What makes this moment critical is clarity: the evidence proves that regular, one-to-one attention from a trained volunteer measurably changes how children read and how they feel about themselves as readers. This isn't aspirational thinking. It's what 96% of teachers are actually seeing in classrooms every day. A child who has never had someone sit with her and decode words together, who has never heard herself praised for trying, who has never felt the quiet pride of finishing a page—that child often becomes a reader for life once a volunteer makes space for her.
The Literacy Link's call is straightforward: more volunteers are needed now. The children waiting aren't waiting for ideal circumstances. They're waiting for someone to show up.