“What we are able to do in three clicks would have taken over three hours in the old system…”

Durand Academy purchased Scholastic Reading Pro in June 2014. They needed to engage children in reading for pleasure, and their current system wasn’t working for them. They are a six-form entry school and they wanted to use Reading Pro with Years 3-6 (approximately 600 pupils). They had three goals:

Goal 1. Value for money

After an initial visit to Durand Academy, a quote was sent to the school with one, two or three year subscription options, plus details of the training and set-up fee. On a return visit to the school in June 2014, they said that the three-year option was almost half the price of the one-year option with our competitor. In cash terms, over three years Reading Pro costs £4600, four times less than the cost of their existing system.

The school was visited on a number of occasions during the summer holidays to set up their school library (they hadn’t got one until that point). Upon conducting an audit, it was discovered that the school only had 500 books (for 600 pupils, you’d usually need 6000 books). Scholastic gives 25% back in free books for every £1 spent. In 2017, Scholastic gave over £9.7m worth of free books to schools. Durand purchased 1000 books through Scholastic’s ready-made book packs
and took advantage of the 250 free ebooks that come with Reading Pro. They started the 14/15 academic year with nearly 2000 books, after previously only having had 500.

Goal 2: Get more children reading more books for pleasure

With the introduction of Reading Pro and a library full of books, by the end of the first year the children in the school had read over 30 million words – by far the most amount of words read by any school using Reading Pro in the UK. Watch a video case study of Durand Academy to see how children reacted to the programme and their thoughts about reading: www.bit.ly/2R4mRu2

Goal 3: Get a good understanding of the reading ability of their pupils

On the very fi rst school visit after purchase of Reading Pro, Suzanne Johnson, the literacy coordinator, commented that “what we are able to do in three clicks would have taken over three hours in the old system”. They now have a very simple way to see how children are performing against themselves (as it shows progression data), other children in their class and year, and the national average. They are also able to identify weak readers, good readers who are not
progressing as they should, and pupils who need interventions. This has had real, practical use in the school.

Case Study written in 2016