SCEC began providing Saturday morning supplementary and enrichment classes at Dulwich College in October 1992.  Five years later, the charity started a scheme at James Allen’s Girls School (JAGS) aimed at helping year three children lacking confidence in any aspect of literacy (ready, writing, comprehension or speaking aloud) in order to provide them with the skills necessary to be able to make progress across the whole range of the primary curriculum.  From its inception, the scheme has proved popular with the primary schools involved as the children attending have, almost without exception, developed in confidence and made greater progress across the curriculum than might otherwise have been predicted.  In the twenty-two years of its existence the scheme has helped over 800 children.

The ALMT grant for the Year 3 literacy scheme has been running since 2019 with 50 children on the roll drawn from a dozen local primary schools.  The children are taught in four classes by experienced primary trained tutors.  In addition, every child has a volunteer Year 10 (14-15 year old) JAGS pupil working alongside them acting as their mentor providing invaluable one-to-one support under the guidance of the tutor.

Socio-economic deprivation is generally recognised as a significant contributory factor in a child’s failure to make satisfactory progress in education and for this reason, SCEC ensures that 35% of attendees are from families eligible for free school meals.  The ALMT grant is used to cover tutor fees.  Now entering its final year, and despite a year’s delay due to the pandemic, this grant has enabled SCEC to widen its geographical catchment area to include Lambeth and Lewisham.