The Literacy Pirates

Who we are

The Literacy Pirates is a charity developing the literacy, confidence and perseverance of children who are falling behind at school and have less advantages in their personal lives, so they can achieve at school and beyond.

We work to break the link between a parent's income and their child's educational attainment where children from low income backgrounds are twice as likely to not acheive GCSE results that set them on a course for higher education and life time income. We know that literacy is the key to educational success, so we use the power of positive reading and writing practice in a joyful, low stakes environment to unlock their potential as successful elarners in school. 

On our year long after-school programme, children aged 9-12 years old are supported by teachers, work on exciting published projects with one-to-one volunteer support within a pirate-themed learning space.

We have grown our income from £350,000 to over £million and increased the number of children we work with by 500%. That growth is set to continue over the coming years.

We are looking for ambitious, digitally curious people who strive to bring a solution-focused approach to their work. 

Come aboard our ship and join the adventure!

Our culture and values

Ambitious. We believe in the exceptional potential of every child.
Expert. We are skilled teachers who value rigour and continuous learning.
Inclusive. We are a diverse community with safe and welcoming spaces that ensure all voices are heard.
Transparent. We’re open in all that we do, and honest about where we can do better.
Joyful. We’re relentlessly positive and make working hard feel like fun.

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

Striving to be a diverse and inclusive workplace

The Literacy Pirates has always been committed to taking an inclusive approach to all the work that we do. We know that a diversity of experience and perspective enriches any organisation, enables the children we work with to better express themselves, and improves the impact we make. Our focus on equity, diversity and inclusion comes from our experience and context:

• We work in areas that are very diverse ethnically and culturally, and it’s vital that we are confident and competent in making our services accessible to all residents in these areas.
• There are occasionally-arising tensions around issues of race and class, and we want to make sure that we are understanding of and responsive to those tensions where we can be, and offer solutions where possible.
• We recognise that there are already significant inequalities in the education sector associated with various aspects of diversity e.g. lower attainment among children from low-income backgrounds, low proportions of teachers from ethnic backgrounds, higher exclusion rates among some groups of children. It’s essential that we are doing everything that we can to tackle these problems rather than accidentally perpetuate them e.g. in making sure that children see a diverse range of role models working in education.
• We are a small staff team, and we are aware that there are likely to be blind spots in our experience and perspective. We want to make ourselves aware of those blind spots by inviting feedback from a range of people who might have more experience and different perspectives.

In recent years we have taken a number of actions to strengthen our commitment to ensuring equity, diversity and inclusion in our charity. We have:

• Developed organisational policies to ensure that they do not discriminate against any employee, trustee, or volunteer, regardless of their background
• Reviewed our recruitment and selection processes to widen the pool of applicants we reach and reduce our biases e.g. through ‘blind shortlisting’, and monitored the outcomes of these to assess if we are attracting a diverse pool of candidates.
• We include children in the interview processes, in a children’s panel, so that the people we work with are represented in the process
• Learned more about the lives of the children we work with
• Enlisted the support of local people as guest speakers and facilitators within the learning programme
• Reviewed and updated our children’s library to include diverse authors and stories with diverse protagonists
• Employed recruitment strategies aimed at increasing diversity in our volunteer community.

Our priorities are now to:

• Recruit a trustee to be a critical friend and help us champion equity throughout the organisation
• Further increase the diversity of our volunteers
• Review our remuneration policy and approach, to ensure greater transparency, fairness, and equality
• Continually learn about each other and the lives of the children we work with.