Skip to content

We use necessary cookies that allow our site to work. We also set optional cookies that help us improve our website.

For more information about the types of cookies we use, and to manage your preferences, visit our Cookies policy here.

Cookie settings
News story

We hold business summit with the Secretary of State for Education

21 Oct 2021

LT EVENT-40.JPG

On Tuesday, we held a business summit with the new Secretary of State for Education, Nadhim Zahawi and our business stakeholders. The summit was a response to the letter we sent to the government in May, which called on them to recognise the business community’s support of children and young people’s urgent literacy needs throughout the pandemic.

Chaired by Dame Julia Cleverdon DCVO CBE, with opening words from Jonathan Douglas CBE, the discussion focused on the ways that businesses have been working with the National Literacy Trust to support literacy levels.

Business response to the summit -

"We were delighted to meet with the new Secretary of State for Education, Nadhim Zahawi at the National Literacy Trust Business Summit on Tuesday.

It was great to meet him so early in his tenure at the Department for Education and hear his plans, especially with regards to education recovery. We particularly welcome his commitment to improving literacy levels and hope that the discussion around our solutions focussed and impactful work demonstrated the value of collaboration with businesses in this space. We look forward to continuing these conversations with him and discussing the unique benefits businesses and charities can bring to literacy.

We were pleased to hear about the plans for the white paper due to be published next year, which will have a focus on literacy and numeracy. We look forward to hearing more details on this in due course and contributing to the development process.

Literacy recovery is a complex problem, that will require the coordination and support of organisations across the public and private sector. We need to focus on the disadvantaged communities where the impact of lockdown on learning has been most damaging, take a holistic approach that is embedded in businesses and communities as well as educational settings, and look at sustainability of these solutions. We look forward to working with the Secretary of State and the Department for Education to embed these principles in their approach to literacy recovery."

Find out more about our COVID-19 policy work

Back to top