What is a strategic approach to literacy?

We provide support to local areas to develop a community-wide and strategic focus on early language and literacy in order to raise standards and improve life chances. Our strategic approach to literacy can help reduce social exclusion by supporting individuals and communities to become more literate, enabling them to fulfil their own, and the nation's potential.

The support we offer has been developed through the Partners in Literacy project, a two-year pilot funded by the Department for Education, which ended on 31 March 2011. The aim of the pilot was to establish the impact of a coordinated and community-wide approach on how families engage with literacy within the home. You can view the background to our work with local authorities here and the final report of the pilot, Local authorities improving life chances: A review of a new approach to raising literacy levels, here.

The framework of our support is based on the following principles: 

• Ensuring a fit to local need and making sure planning has a robust evidence base.
• Securing buy-in from a wide range of local partners.
• Improving access to existing provision and extending the reach of literacy support to audiences with the greatest need.
• Increasing capacity through training for frontline staff or by engaging volunteers.
• Evaluating the approach to determine impact.
• Ensuring that the approach will be sustainable by embedding it strategically.

This approach is grounded in research and current policy, with proven impact reported by our current local authority partners.

View a presentation on our work with communities and local areas. 

Examples of local practice using our approach:

• Wiltshire County Council has identified innovative ways for midwives and health visitors to encourage new parents to support their child’s literacy development.
• Rochdale is helping individuals to improve their own skills. Volunteers and frontline staff are trained to become Literacy Champions, providing peer-to-peer support in local neighbourhoods.
• Working with us, Sheffield identified a gap in training offered to foster carers and now links carers to existing services so that they know how to help their foster children improve their literacy.