HELPING IN SCHOOLS

RSVP volunteers help children learn by working with teachers in schools throughout the RSVP West region. They tend to be concentrated in the bigger towns and cities such as

Helping with reading.

Swindon, Bath and Bristol but are also to be found in the smaller communities of North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

Volunteers mostly join primary schools — less often secondaries. Usually there’s one volunteer to a school but sometimes more. They’re there under the general direction of a teacher to help and support classwork. Most often they listen to children practising their reading, but some also support children doing cooking and sewing, arts and crafts, computing, maths, music, languages and sport. Others help with creating school gardens and tree planting and assist teachers with school visits and trips to libraries.

Miranda Moore is the reading recovery teacher at South Street Primary in Bristol. “Children can have complex needs, both educational and social, that leave them below average. Often they get little or no reading at home or even much conversation with adults. We can’t always meet their needs within the time available in school. That’s why volunteers are so valuable.

Helping with a school garden.

The one-to-one regular relationship between a volunteer and a child is wonderful. It helps their reading a lot but it also greatly improves their social skills.”

Ian Tennant is the schools organiser for Bristol. “I believe passionately in the value of education and especially the need for children to learn to read well. If they don’t their lives are blighted. When I discovered the shocking statistic that one in ten of Bristol children leaving primary school were unable to read, I determined to do something about it; becoming the RSVP West’s schools organiser in Bristol has proved an excellent way to do so.”

He’s as positive as Miranda Moore about the value of volunteers to their schools:

Giving children guidance in using computers.

“Many of them are grandparents, with experience of two generations of child rearing, and they provide a perspective from an older viewpoint that complements that of the mainly younger teachers in primary schools. Male volunteers are particularly valuable, since a lot of children come from one-parent families with no male role model.”

Volunteering in schools isn’t onerous. The time you can donate ranges from one session of two hours a week up to five or more, though you’re usually started at the lower end of that range. Advice and training is given beforehand, together with periodic refresher sessions. All volunteers are given a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check, arranged without charge by the school. If you feel you’d like to help, please contact us.

© 2003–12 RSVP West. Page last updated on 13 May 2011.