Butterfield Bank Jersey is supporting local charity Every Child Our Future (ECOF) to ‘close the education gap’ by volunteering time to practice literacy and numeracy skills with primary school children.
ECOF aims to tackle the widening gap between the highest and lowest academic achievers and to prevent children from disadvantaged backgrounds falling behind.
ECOF supports volunteers by training them so they can spend one-to-one time with a child practicing Key Stage 1 and 2 literacy and numeracy skills.
Butterfield has volunteered one hour per week to supporting pupils at Rouge Bouillon School and currently four employees are taking part in the initiative. Each volunteer spends between fifteen to twenty minutes with a child and typically sees three children each week.
Gillian Arthur, Director of ECOF Jersey said, “In Jersey’s States funded schools, only 65% of children are secure readers at age eleven and even fewer children reach this level in schools with significant proportions of pupils for whom English is not their first language and who are receiving Jersey Premium. It is our goal to tackle this shortfall and ensure that 95% of pupils go into secondary school with the basic literacy skills to do well. Community support is invaluable in helping us work towards this aim. When children engage and are encouraged by adults it helps develop their learning and boosts their self-esteem.”
Noel McLaughlin, Managing Director of Butterfield in Jersey said, “We are very excited to support ECOF’s volunteering programme. Investing in the communities we work within is something that is very important to us. We recognise how crucial numeracy and literacy skills are to the foundations of learning and school engagement; we want to help the island’s young people to have the best possible start in school life.”
