The campaign aims to raise awareness of illiteracy and to increase the number of vital volunteer readers who provide much-needed practical help for youngsters in school.
In the coming months, the KM Group, publisher of titles including the Kent Messenger, Kentish Express and Kentish Gazette, is running a series of media initiatives aimed at increasing the number of Beanstalk volunteers in Kent by a third.
Primary schools who would like to have a Beanstalk volunteer will be encouraged to come forward.
Some 2,835 children (15.7%), or nearly one in six, left primary school in Kent, including Medway, last year having failed to meet the expected reading standards for their age, known as level four.
A total of 2,265 of them were in Kent County Council’s area, where the SATs results for Key Stage Two showed around one in seven children (15%) failed to reach level four.
570 of them were in Medway Council’s area, where one in five children (19%) failed to reach the expected level four standard.
Chairman of the KM Group Geraldine Allinson, said: “I think it is very sad that any child comes out of a Kent primary school with substandard reading abilities. Being unable to read properly limits people’s lives and I believe all of us in Kent should do what we can to make this a thing of the past."
Each week in Kent, 177 Beanstalk reading helpers from the community support 553 local children across 107 primary schools.
