A report from the National Literacy Trust has found that a reading campaign led by Premier League footballers has achieved significant success with participating pupils.

The scheme was launched in January 2012 and involved 472 primary schools and 232 secondary schools.

The focus of the scheme was to target and work with schools that were not reaching national literacy levels and had large numbers of children from financially disadvantage backgrounds.

Within the campaign, the 20 Premier League players, which included Theo Walcott, Chris Smalling and Owen Hargreaves, set 5 challenges, with multiple-choice quizzes following.

The report highlighted a series of impressive results for the 34,000 pupils who participated:

  • 75% of pupils claimed they read more knowing that footballers read
  • 75% of pupils made six months to a years progress in 10 weeks
  • 60% of pupils read more in their own time as a result of the campaign
  • 49% of pupils joined their public library, and 35% who were already members now use their public library more often

Such is the success of the campaign, it is to be repeated again this year with a further selection of footballer with the aim of inspiring and encouraging more reluctant readers to read.

Image Credit: denisdervisevic @ Flickr