Blog list page

With the start of a new school year, this English teacher is feeling refreshed and ready to go after a summer break spent teaching on the NTP.

Reading for pleasure has lifelong benefits for all ages – children especially. As such, it sits at the heart of The Reading Agency’s mission and vision. Here Creative Director, Debbie Hicks, looks at the statistics behind those benefits, and discusses why reading for pleasure is so important.

After more than a year of tough educational challenges, what’s the impact on how teachers and pupils feel about school? To find out, we’re reflecting on our recent research and asking for your thoughts.

If somebody told you that a child’s love of comics, or fascination with fairy-stories, had the power to change society for the better, would you think they were telling tall tales? In fact, the life-changing potential of reading for pleasure is no fiction.

Welcome to our special end of term Primary Update. Here we take a look at Bug Club Phonics DfE revalidation, newly revised Power Maths Reception resources and our free downloadable Summer Fun Activities pack. We also see what the DfE’s new Early Reading Framework document means for you and explore the key challenges and priorities of almost 3,000 teachers. 

On 1 April, the DfE released updated essential core criteria for systematic synthetic phonics (SPP) programmes and announced that they were launching a validation process closing in March 2022. 

Jess Pentelow, Product Manager at Pearson, reflects on our conversations with educators this year about the use of tech-enabled learning, our key learnings this year and what they may mean for digital education moving forward. 

In this month's news we announce our new Share a Read campaign, look forward to our Maths Festival, explore Development Support for early years, look at the research around Key Primary Challenges and Priorities and introduce a new CPD course about Primary History and Geography.

Over the last few years, the role of a primary subject lead has changed. With a greater emphasis on the quality of curriculum children receive, the expectations of leaders in each subject have also risen dramatically. Gone are the days of simply allocating the different topics to year groups.

The latest addition to our Bug Club reading family for primary pupils, ‘The Show Must Go On’, is a beautifully illustrated tale based within the fairground community.