Yulia’s ‘Box of Treasures’

Yulia’s

‘Box of Treasures’

Eight-year-old Yulia had arrived in London from Ukraine three months ago, with just a small suitcase and a backpack with a handful of toys.

She is safe, but the noises of London trigger frightening reminders of the war in Ukraine. Her headteacher, Inna, described how construction work and drilling near the school caused Yulia to ‘hide under her desk with fear’. Another classmate has nightmares, caused by the sound of trains near her temporary accommodation.

Inna said: “They still have many obstacles to overcome. They may not know where their friends and family have ended up, and they are now having to battle with a language barrier, which causes frustration and feelings of rejection.”

Stories like Yulia’s are why we put together the Bookmark Box for Ukraine: to support with a sense of belonging and to support language acquisition over time.

Inna described it as ‘a box of treasures’. She said: “Every item in the box was thought through. The welcome letter in Ukrainian made a big difference; it was so powerful.”

"The box supports children's wellbeing through storytelling, writing, and play as they adapt to their new environment and begin to settle." – Cllr Julie Reed, cabinet member for Children and Families

What we've learnt and what we'll do next

We’re proud of what we’ve achieved this year with the help of our school partners, volunteers and supporters – but we know there’s always more to do.

Here’s a summary of what we've learnt in 2022, and the actions we’re taking to make a bigger impact in 2023.

Our reading programme

What we've learnt:

Most of the children we support are in Years 3 and 4, but older children need our help too. There is demand from schools to support Year 5 children who were in Year 2 at the start of lockdown.

Currently, our attainment data doesn’t tell the whole story because the current buckets of ‘at’, ‘below’ and ‘above’ are not nuanced enough to reflect incremental progress. We see greater impact and improvement from children engaged in multiple reading programmes one after the other.

We received overwhelmingly positive feedback from teachers, but we'd still like to see a higher level of engagement from schools with our programme.

For volunteers, high cancellations, noise issues and tech challenges make it harder for a reading session to run smoothly and for the child to get the most out of the session.

We have a growing community of volunteers, but we need to increase diversity to allow for overall growth in our volunteer pool whilst retaining our original volunteers.

The action we’re taking:

We supported over 40 Year 5 pupils at 13 schools in the autumn term and we will extend this to more partner schools in 2023. We’ll review our online resources and volunteer reader training to make sure they’re suitable for the different age groups we support.

We're introducing more nuanced attainment fields at the baseline data gathering point to better understand our impact and we're making it easier for children to take part in multiple programmes.

We're introducing new ways of working with schools, including a tiered partnership system, additional literacy resources and access to CPD grants. We’re piloting new ways to collect feedback throughout the year so that we hear from teachers/schools that leave our programme and ensure school voice is central to our continuous improvement cycle.

We’re reviewing our volunteer training. We’ll also be increasing the number of session coordinators to facilitate the smooth running of sessions and we'll continue to invest in and improve technology to create the best learning environment.

We will carry out more research to better understand this. We will adopt a new attraction strategy as part of a long-term commitment to address the issues of diversity, representation and inclusion.