Volunteering in a primary school - Qs for teachers

[Chottie]

I would really, really like to do this and in particular to listen and help children with reading.

Does your school have volunteers who are not parents? How would I go about applying? I have looked on several local schools' websites, but there is nothing about volunteering. All my local schools are part of academy chains (not sure if that makes a difference). Thanks

We have used volunteer readers who are not parents in the school.
We currently have some volunteer readers from this organisation

www.beanstalkcharity.org.uk/

The charity provides training to the readers.

Call / email the school.

You'll probably be invited in for a chat and will need to fill out paperwork for a DBS check.

Good luck, I hope you enjoy it. I would love to have a volunteer to hear children read.

You’d be welcomed with open arms at my place once you had your dbs done. We are always desperate for extra readers. We have volunteers and also use Beanstalk as above

School will prob do your dbs for you

Lots come in to help at my kids' school who aren't parents - we have our fair share of grandparents etc, but also people who've had kids through the school previously, people from the local community who just want to come in to help, ex-staff who come back to say hello and if they sit still for more than a second get given the reading records and told to help work through them...

It's not just readers though - we have people helping with gardening, baking and all sorts with different groups of kids.

We’d bite your arm off! Particularly if you said “I’d love to volunteer, what can I do to help?” Some of our volunteers do admin thugs like sticking work into books, photocopying etc that enables the TAs to then do the listening to children tasks.

Thank you so much for your replies. I will email the three primary schools local to me and see what the position would be from September.

I would be happy to help with crafts, baking, gardening as well. I have an enhanced DBS.

I do a lot of gluing work into books - partly because it's driven me insane how much staff time is taken up with gluesticks and faffing with bits of paper, and partly because staff know I'm not precious and likely to take offence doing it (I just zone out and get through the piles of books). I also quite like sitting cutting out piles of faffy bits of paper and the like and know just how much of a timesink it is for the school staff!