Ziggies arose from a two year study within the ‘Schools-focused Communities’ project in Rhondda Cynon Taf and from wider research from within the UK and Europe which found that:

• A significant minority of young people entering secondary school in South Wales have very low reading ages.
• Pupils need a reading age of at least nine (Entry Level 3) to follow the secondary school curriculum.
• A parent’s involvement has a huge impact on a child’s reading skills.
• Family background and the level of the parent’s education, in particular a father’s interest in a child’s education is strongly linked to positive outcomes for the child.
• Three-quarters of parents say that they want more involvement in their children’s education.

How Ziggies works

Ziggies brings together children and their parents/guardians to enjoy activities based around storytelling.

Each week, the children and their parents are given a popular short book, the person leading the week’s fun reads the story out loud and there is a short question and answer session about the story.

The children and their parents also take part in fun activities based on the week’s chosen story. Examples may be as varied as making masks featuring the characters in the story, holding a teddy bears’ picnic or a special game in which the adults and children take part. At the end of the session everyone regroups and the story is together again because repetition has a powerful impact on learning.

The format is straightforward and the activities are simple to arrange, plus the cost is next to nothing. No experience or special ability is needed to lead the sessions, volunteers from RCT Homes are currently leading the Ziggies activities however, this will be handed over to the local parents to run the programme themselves.

What makes Ziggies special?

Ziggies is not a reading lesson, the key aim is to give parents the confidence to take an active role in supporting their children’s reading no matter what their own educational attainment. Ziggies will show them how easy it is to share the enjoyment of story time with their children.

Everything in the programme is done to break down the barriers to parents’ involvement. For instance, our research suggests that children and their parents can easily feel stigmatised if attention is drawn to reading difficulties. Far from encouraging them to take part, phrases such as ‘literacy project’ or even ‘book club’ can drive away the very target audience we are trying to reach. The word ‘literacy’ is never used in the promotion of Ziggies and we avoid words such as ‘project’, ‘initiative’, ‘scheme’ and even ‘teaching’. Ziggies was chosen precisely because it has no meaning therefore no stigma plus its fun.