About Partners in Literacy (formerly Family Reading Matters)

Literacy can change lives.

Low literacy rates are associated with social exclusion, poor health, low educational attainment, offending, unemployment and lack of access to training and skills. These factors make literacy a concern to a whole range of government departments and local authority directorates.

PiL is a pilot project funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), working in partnership with local authorities to understand how to develop local multi-agency approaches to supporting literacy. To develop PiL, a strategic coordinator has been funded in four pilot authorities. The focus of the project is on disadvantaged families and the home environment. The pilots will establish the difference made by the approach in terms of reach to these families and the impact of this engagement. The long-term goal is for more families to promote early language development, speaking, listening, reading, and writing in the home.

PiL 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.

More about the PiL approach

• The rationale for PiL
• How PiL works with local authorities
• Background to PiL
• The Partners in Literacy Approach (ppt)