To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what use his Department plans to make of the voluntary and community sector in delivering personalised learning and one-to-one tuition in English in the Making Good Progress pilot areas; and if he will make a statement. (153621)

Reading mentors are an invaluable resource for many schools in supporting children to read well. The Department is currently providing funding to Volunteer Reading Help (VRH)—a charitable organisation which recruits, trains and places volunteers to give one-to-one help twice a week to children aged 6-11 years who find reading a challenge. Currently VRH has around 2,000 volunteer readers working with around 5,000 children.

In the ‘Making Good Progress’ pilot, each pilot local authority will be responsible for making arrangements for delivering tuition including overseeing the recruitment of suitable tutors, who must be qualified teachers, and organising locations for the tuition to take place. We know that some local authorities are liaising with community groups who have offered venues for tuition.

The wider picture is that over £1 billion has been invested in personalised learning by 2007-08, Our guidance to schools indicated that our priorities for the funding were: to support intervention and catch-up provision for children who have fallen behind in English and maths; to support the education of gifted and talented learners; and to help learners from deprived backgrounds to access after school and year-round activities. It is for schools to decide how to use this money to provide more tailored support for their pupils.

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (1) what delivery partners his Department will work with to deliver one-to-one tuition in reading and literacy in (a) Making Good Progress pilot local authorities and (b) other local authorities in England; and if he will make a statement; (153625)

In the “Making Good Progress” pilot one-to-one tuition will be an out of school hours programme of up to 10 hours of individual tuition in English and/or mathematics. Tutors will liaise with the class teacher to ensure that the tuition that they offer meets the needs of the child and is closely tied in to the work that the child is doing in class. Each pilot local authority will be responsible for making its own arrangements for delivering tuition, including overseeing the recruitment of suitable tutors, who must be qualified teachers, and organising locations for tuition to take place.

We are now in the third and final year of the “Every Child a Reader” pilot, funded by a collaboration between the DfES, KPMG Foundation and other charitable trusts. The pilot is helping 5,000 six-year-olds with significant learning difficulties to learn to read. It does this by placing specialist literacy teachers into schools to provide intensive one-to-one or small group support to children most in need. Results from the first year of the pilot showed that children made well over four times the normal rate of progress. As a result, a national roll-out will begin from 2008-09 benefiting over 30,000 children a year by 2011.