Skills for the future

Coram Life Education supported 574,000 children in schools across England and Scotland to gain the skills and wellbeing they need for life, while we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Coram Beanstalk with our Patron Her Majesty The Queen.

Key life skills for children

Coram Life Education (CLE) is the leading charity provider of relationships, health, wellbeing, and drugs education to children across the UK working with our network of delivery partners and branches. Over the last year we have supported teachers in over 2,500 primary schools and 575,000 children nationwide through educator-led workshops and online curriculum resources, an increase of 49% in children reached.

Emma Appelby, head teacher at Horsenden Primary School, says: “Before, our children didn’t really understand what PSHE was. Now they are absolutely clear – in SCARF, we learn about our relationships, we learn about keeping ourselves safe...There has been a positive impact on children understanding their roles and responsibilities and their rights.”

1,681 READING VOLUNTEERS

Mental Health resources

Innovations during the year included the launch of a toolkit of resources for teachers to use with children during Children’s Mental Health Week, themed around our Coram SCARF values of safety, caring, achievement, resilience and friendship and including Wear Your Scarf to School Day.

UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools programme, the Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, and the drugs education charity The Daniel Spargo Mabbs Foundation are just three organisations collaborating with CLE to develop our teacher training, reinforcing Coram’s commitment to upholding children’s rights, empowering them and giving them a voice.

Looking forward

In the coming year, with support from the Education Endowment Foundation, educator-led workshops, practitioner training and online resources are being developed to help three and four year olds begin to build the foundations of emotional self-regulation, by showing an understanding of their own feelings and those of others, and begin to regulate their behaviour. We know that for many children, maths is a daunting subject and one that can cause feelings of anxiety and fear. We want all children to feel that they can do maths and so Coram Life Education and Coram Beanstalk are launching free school assemblies and parents’ resources to help with this with the support of TP ICAP.

Creating readers

Since its formation as the first reading volunteering charity in 1973, Coram Beanstalk has provided one-to-one support, enabling more than 250,000 children to develop a love of reading. Our impact evidence shows that through volunteers there are significant improvements in reading attainment, confidence, enjoyment, and emotional wellbeing.

This year 5,043 children were supported and our thanks go in particular to The Very Group, the Constance Travis Charitable Trust, and to the DHL Foundation. We are grateful to the Pears Foundation / DCMS Volunteering Futures Fund for a vital grant which encouraged new volunteers, particularly from diverse backgrounds. We developed the new Reading Leaders programme to train 16-18 year olds to support their younger peers, and to gain additional skills and recognition in the Duke of Edinburgh Awards.

Jan Forshaw, Head of Education for 30 years was recognised for her service to children in the pandemic with the award of MBE

Scarf Resources Benefitted

52,268 TEACHERS

A retired dyslexia therapist, Peta Travis has been a volunteer at Ark Brunel Primary Academy in North Kensington (previously known as Middle Row Primary) one of the first to welcome reading volunteers, for 45 years. She has worked with more than 100 children and says, “The highlight for me is getting that first smile in the morning and seeing their love of reading, confidence and self-esteem improve. We’re lucky we can take children out of the classroom so we can improve their language skills as well as their reading - and of course all sorts of things come up in the books that we can talk about.”

Jade’s story

In November 2011, Kostyantyn Shevago donated £100,000 to Beanstalk and the Evening Standard’s ‘Get London Reading’ Campaign to fund up to 30 reading helpers at St Mary’s Catholic Primary in Battersea. Within a month 25 reading helpers had been recruited and trained by Beanstalk to start reading with 75 children at St Mary’s. One of these reading helpers was Jill Pay and one of the children she worked with was a little girl in year five called Jade, who was struggling with her reading because of dyslexia. Today Jade, now 19, is studying Marketing and Advertising at university and says that the Beanstalk sessions played a significant part in her success.