Jersey Community Foundation has awarded £5,000 of Channel Islands Lottery funding to Every Child Our Future.
The grant is funding the delivery of dual language performances of familiar stories like ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ to over 600 nursery and primary school pupils at 10 schools across the Island.
As well as being enjoyable, these performances are specifically designed to improve literacy and to enhance the experience of students aged 3 to 5 years old with English as an additional language. Each performance is delivered by Flair Entertainment and followed by a short Q&A session to develop the themes and language of the story. Copies of the story and accompanying props are also provided for each class attending.
The need for dual language education is backed by Jersey Community Foundation’s (JCF) ‘Local Needs Assessment’ (2022) which found that English is an additional language for 26% of students in Jersey.
Cris Lakeman, CEO of Every Child Our Future (ECOF) commented on the importance of tackling literacy gaps: “Unless these literacy gaps are addressed at primary school level, we continue to embed long-lasting social and economic inequalities within our community. We are working to redress these social inequalities via our programmes to improve outcomes in communication, language, literacy and numeracy for less advantaged children in Jersey.
“We are grateful to JCF and CI Lottery for directing several Lottery grants to us this year as part of tackling this critical issue.”
Jon Taylor, Presiding Officer of CI Lottery said: “These theatre performances are a brilliant way of demonstrating that small projects can have a big impact on the wellbeing and educational advancement of primary school pupils. The reviews have been outstanding, from students and teachers alike. We are pleased to support ECOF’s valuable programme of work and grateful to JCF for recognising the importance of the project as part of addressing inequality in Jersey.”
