The History of the Young Readers Programme

The Young Readers Programme was established as an initiative of the National Literacy Trust in 1996. Based on the model of Reading Is Fundamental, Inc, active in the US since 1966, it was known as Reading Is Fundamental, UK until 2009.

The programme was initially funded as a three-year pilot using a grant from Tate and Lyle. The earliest projects involved just 12 primary schools across the UK, but within five years the scheme was reaching an average of 20,000 children at up to 300 sites every year. To date, more than 935,000 books have been chosen by over 322,000 children.