What is the Right to Read Inquiry Report?  The Right to Read Inquiry Report is a detailed write-up of a public inquiry by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. It details the findings of a 2019 investigation into literacy as a human rights issue. It also explores how literacy problems impact Ontario’s school-age population and the ways in which current literacy education practice struggles to serve all learners in the public education system. The full report is 558 pages, but a simplified executive summary is also available to download at the Ontario Commission of Human Rights. &nbs ..read more

The data breakdown Literacy and life chances are closely linked. That’s why Canada’s Indigenous literacy statistics cause so much consternation – 45% of Indigenous adults do not have any educational qualifications Around 50% of Indigenous people live on-reserve, where there are 50% more high-school dropouts than off-reserve 50% of Indigenous people leave secondary school without any qualifications; a figure twice as high as the number of non-Indigenous people And in the last decade, 50% of Indigenous households were classed as having ‘serious’ literacy problems. Rongo H. Wetere Ph.D ..read more

If we took a survey of freshers and asked them what they were excited for about heading off to university, we’re willing to bet that not many of them would vote for the huge step up in work. Learning gets more intensive and self-led after college and contact time with lecturers is far shorter. And there are a lot of competing priorities too: different course modules will have catalogues of different books to read, and at this stage, none of them are short. That’s why productivity-boosting student hacks are the order of the day, because even the most diligent learner is going to struggle to de ..read more

Scanning Pens are in the papers! “Text-to-speech reading pens like ReaderPen Secure have taken off in the past three years, and are now used in around 90% of UK secure estate settings. In some, they’re only used in the education block – but other sites permit their use in cells or in the library, allowing prisoners to read everything from their favourite newspaper (Inside Times, of course), to legal documentation and books.” ➡️ Read the article in full at Inside Time, the UK’s national newspaper for prisoners and detainees. It’s amazing to see what Inside Time and others have to say about our ..read more

Heading off into post-secondary study is kind of big, actually. Learners have left the classroom behind and are embarking on a different phase of their educational journey. It’s not going to be as structured or as educator-led as it has been before: assigned reading is going to get more intensive, as are the concepts. Learners in STEM and skilled trades subject areas need strong reading skills just as much as those studying English or languages, and will be set to feel the changes over the next semester or two as academic study evolves from something that happens in books to something that h ..read more

At Scanning Pens, we love it when schools go the extra mile for learners who need reading support. And sometimes we get a chance to meet the dedicated educators who are pushing the boundaries of what supporting neurodivergent learners can mean. We were lucky to do that recently with a visit to Sir Alexander Fleming Primary School in Telford! Going Red on the Road… This week, as part of our celebrations for Go Red for Dyslexia, two of our Scanning Pens roving reporters, Jim and Katie, headed out into the heart of our local community in Telford to celebrate a school that’s truly going the ext ..read more

…And yes, they’re all about the C-Pen Reader 2. Let’s go! Going back to school with dyslexia is more than knowing you’re about to take on another year of learning and developing. For neurodivergent learners with reading differences, it’s about knowing that you’ll be taking on another year of reading too, and whatever pressure points that might entail: keeping up with assigned work, reading in front of others, isolation, grade impacts—the list goes on.   We’re two weeks into term and it’s around now that for a lot of learners, the novelty might be beginning to wear off. For some, t ..read more

GCSE Results Day 2023 yesterday marks the last major grade release of another complicated exam season. 2023 has been a unique year logistically. Our GCSE learners have experienced pandemic education, and have had to learn remotely and in stressful conditions throughout some of their formative educational years—but experienced none of that at KS4. These learners were in Year 8 in March 2020 when the pandemic hit, multiple years away from their GCSEs, and as such, give us one of the first glimpses into the long-term futures of the ‘Covid Generation’ of learners. A-Level students didn’t avoid th ..read more

Especially if they have literacy differences like dyslexia, getting kids reading over summer proves a hard sell. As well as competing with other leisure activities, they may also find it too reminiscent of school and the pressures of reading in class to truly engage with any gusto—we’d rather be playing video games, too.   But summer reading is important. That’s why we’ve put together this list of new, zany ways to get kids reading over summer… featuring our flagship reading support tool the C-Pen Reader 2, for those learners who may need a little extra support.   Get kids reading o ..read more

What is A Review of Reading Education in Prisons—and what can it tell us about literacy and prison settings? “You can’t teach phonics through a cell door” —this is how one prison educator described the experience of teaching literacy during the pandemic. Social distancing procedure advised that individual contact was limited to interactions of necessity, and although many institutions provided education packs to be completed in-cell, these demanded a moderate level of reading ability, rendering them far too difficult to use without support for many prison learners. This means that prison liter ..read more