Devon’s biggest reading challenge starts this month

An exciting reading challenge, designed to improve literacy levels in primary school children across the country is coming to Devon in June.

The competition, called One Million Minutes, is run by award-winning education charity Achievement for All and challenges primary school classes in different regions across the UK to read for as many minutes as they can in just one week.

The aim of the competition is to encourage children to read following statistics that show a quarter of all children leave primary education without reading well. In England, struggling to read is more closely linked to low pay and the risk of being unemployed than in any other developed country.

The class which manages to clock up the most number of minutes and top the leaderboard by the end of the week will win a brand new reading corner for their school with books of their choice, worth over £1,000, courtesy of Peters Books & Furniture.

Devon’s challenge takes place on Wednesday 22nd June - Wednesday 29th June 2016 and every class in every primary school in Devon is being invited to sign up to the competition, free of charge.

CEO and founder of Achievement for All, Professor Sonia Blandford, said: “A recent report by Unicef revealed that the UK was ranked 25th out of 37 countries in reading. Shocking figures that we want to change.

“Reading for just an extra ten minutes a day can have a huge impact on a child’s education and this challenge is designed to inspire children to pick up a book and start reading, while giving teachers a fun and engaging way to encourage them to do so. From our previous challenges, teachers have reported that children didn’t want to put their books down!

“We’ve already had over 200 primary children in Devon sign up to the challenge, which is fantastic! We would love more teachers to sign up their classes to take advantage of this opportunity. It doesn’t cost a penny, will inspire children to read, and give them the chance to win a fabulous prize for their school.”

So far the challenge has been to eight different regions across the country, with 28,000 children taking part, reading for a combined total of a staggering 3,172,266 minutes. Lancashire has been the only region to smash the One Million Minutes target, but can Devon beat them?

Once registered on the One Million Minutes website, teachers will be sent a welcome pack including posters, lesson plan ideas, door hangers and special bookmarks which children can use to log the number of minutes read at home and at school. All teachers have to do is collate the class total each day and log it on the website which features an exciting real-time leaderboard, enabling classes to battle it out to get to the top!

Schools can register as many classes as they wish, enabling every child to benefit from the competition, while increasing their chances of winning. The class that reads for the most amount of minutes and tops the leaderboard at the end of the week, will win the beautiful new reading corner for their school.

Achievement for All is one of a coalition of charities leading the Read On. Get On. campaign to get every child reading well by the age of 11 by 2025.