Talking Point: navigating the literacy resource landscape
Sian Hardy introduces Literacy Hive, a one-stop site for literacy support.
In 2014, a coalition of leading charities and educational organisations launched the Read On. Get On. campaign to improve reading levels in England and ensure that all children left primary school able to read well by 2025. One of the key points made in their 2016 strategy document was that solving the country’s literacy problems was not something that teachers would be able to achieve on their own. Success would require a concerted effort from everybody:
We need to mobilise the resources of all parts of society – including business, the third sector, the media, publishers, authors and celebrities… (1)
Sadly, the Read On. Get On. campaign is no longer active and we are still a long way from meeting the ambitious targets it set. However, I would argue that support for teachers from the wider world of literacy has never been greater:
- Authors have never been more visible or accessible, providing inspiration at literature festivals, through online events, and even engaging with schools on social media;
- Despite the loss of the Blue Peter and Costa Book Awards, we still have numerous national and regional book awards that cover a wide range of genres and are now helping to raise the profile of previously under-represented groups. Many of them also run shadowing schemes to help engage young readers with the latest titles;
- Arts organisations have literacy-based outreach projects and our many literacy charities run nationwide initiatives fronted by high-profile figures, including royalty.
And that’s before we start looking at the digital tools and innovative online platforms from commercial organisations that harness the latest technology to support learners and make the curriculum more accessible. Support for classroom teaching is available from many different quarters.
And therein lies part of the problem. All these projects, programmes and services are scattered across hundreds of different websites and take time to find – time that most teachers simply do not have. The result is that, all too often, teachers are simply unaware of the resources and expertise available to support them. Of course, there are some schools that are taking full advantage of what’s on offer, while literacy charities must demonstrate engagement to ensure future funding. However, just as the children’s book market is characterized by a relatively small number of committed book buyers who buy a disproportionately large share of books (2), I would argue that awareness of this wider literacy support is also skewed, with a few schools that are ‘in the know’ and many that have never heard of even well-established resources such as Books for Keeps.
I felt there was a need to provide a way to help raise awareness of all these different resources, to ensure that all schools could take advantage of the opportunities on offer. And that’s when the idea for Literacy Hive was born.
What does Literacy Hive do?
Literacy Hive was created to provide a way to connect teachers to the wider world of books and reading and help them find high-quality resources to support all aspects of the literacy curriculum quickly and easily.
Literacy Hive does not create any resources of its own. It is a signposting service designed to help teachers navigate the existing literacy resource landscape. There are already plenty of places where you can find lists of useful websites, but Literacy Hive does much more than that. It recognises that, when teachers are looking for support, they aren’t looking for generic literacy resources, they need help to tackle a particular issue. That is why all the resources on the platform are categorised into headings that cover different areas of the literacy curriculum or address a particular literacy concern – help with planning a poetry module, for example, or resources to support a new EAL student. Selecting a heading from one of the four main categories – Supporting Individual Pupils, Whole School Reading, Inspiring Writers and Books and Authors – pulls up a selection of different resources from a variety of different providers. Teachers can then use filters to refine their search by Key Stage, Cost or Resource Type – choosing from a range of support options from lesson plans and book recommendation sites to author events and CPD courses.
Literacy Hive also includes an online Literacy Year calendar of relevant celebration days, book awards, conferences and writing competitions that allows teachers to see what is coming up month by month to help them plan their literacy curriculum. Each calendar entry also includes a ‘Further Resources’ feature with links to relevant booklists, author events or other projects on a similar theme. The advantage of an online calendar is that it can be easily updated as new resources become available so that teachers always have the latest information at their fingertips.
Supporting teachers today
Literacy Hive was created to support and empower teachers. It is a place of discovery where they can be introduced to new resources, but it also provides them with an overview of what’s available so that they can compare different resources and choose the ones that are best suited to their needs or setting. With education budgets under such enormous pressure, it is more important than ever for teachers to know what is available so that they can make informed buying decisions that will ensure best value for money. They can also take advantage of the surprising number of free resources to help those literacy budgets stretch just that little bit further.
The impact of the pandemic, the role of Ofsted, low morale and recruitment issues … the list of challenges facing our education system is long. Demands for better funding and campaigns such as the Great School Libraries Campaign are all vitally important, but they are dependent on government policy and could take years to come into effect. Meanwhile the work of teachers carries on as they seek to ensure the best outcomes for the 10.5 million young people in UK schools, outcomes that depend on high levels of literacy. Helping teachers access the support that already exists to enable them to deliver an engaging literacy curriculum is something that can be done today. Literacy Hive does not claim to have all the answers, but I believe that the service it provides is an important first step to ensuring that all our young people have the literacy skills they need and deserve.
Sian Hardy has over 35 years’ experience of working in the children’s book world, in a variety of roles. She began her career in editorial and then moved to be the buyer for a national children’s book club after doing an MA in Children’s Literature. More recently, her work has focused on schools, working on delivering the schools programmes for several children’s literature festivals and supporting an e-book platform dedicated to the school market. That overview of the children’s book world, combined with a desire to help teachers create the readers of tomorrow led her to set up Literacy Hive.
- Read On. Get On. (2016) A Strategy to Get England’s Children Reading
- Farshore (2022) Reading for Pleasure and Purpose and Nielsen’s Books and Consumers: rolling 12 months to end of September 2021.
