- Shadow Minister pledges support for ‘innovative’ and ‘excellent’ charity
- Butterfly Reading Group faces uncertain future and could face problems similar to Peckham’s Kid’s Company
Michael Gove MP, the Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools & Families and Joanne Cash, the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Westminster North, both visited the charity Real Action’s Butterfly Reading Group in Queen’s Park and praised their ‘excellent’ work whilst urging the Government to provide greater support and backing for the project whose outlook is uncertain due to a funding squeeze.
The Butterfly Saturday Reading School teaches 150 children aged between five and 12 to read through phonics in classes held on Saturday mornings and also teaches adults literacy and English. The results are impressive for both children and adults. 30 one hour classes can advance a child’s reading ability by 13 months and a 16 week adult course can see adults with previously no English at all progress to an intermediate standard. Recent evidence also shows that improving children’s literacy is an effective long-term measure in cutting youth crime and anti-social behaviour.
The charity’s co-founder and Education Director Katie Ivens this week was named in the Evening Standard’s 1000 most influential people in London 2007 for her work on the scheme and in the wider community. However despite this and the project’s excellent track record, its future remains uncertain due to tightening purse strings and a lack of easily available funds.
Speaking at the charity’s home on the Mozart Estate, Michael Gove MP said: ‘After ten years of Labour and huge taxpayer expense in our education system, literacy standards in our schools remain unacceptably low. The Butterfly Reading Group’s excellent results working with kids from a range of backgrounds and nationalities shows how, with innovative teaching methods, real, tangible improvements in our children’s education can be achieved.’
Joanne, who has supported and followed the work of the charity since her selection earlier this year, said: ‘Katie Ivens and her team of volunteers provide the young people of Harrow Road and Queen’s Park with an opportunity to improve their education and life chances, an opportunity which many other children up and down the country do not have. The Government must do more to ensure that vital community projects such as this, which are the engine rooms of social mobility and future opportunity, have the funding and support they need to continue their excellent work.’
Ivens and the local parents and residents who run Real Action are desperate to continue the project and help more young people. But they’re worried about the future: ‘We celebrated ten years of the Butterfly project this year and hundreds of local children in that time have benefited from the scheme. All children want to read and all adults want to learn English and we want to be there to help them fulfil this desire. But when we look at our balance sheet and the problems of other high profile charities, like Kid’s Company, we fear for the future and wonder whether we will be around for another ten years. We badly need donations.’
