Last year, National Literacy Trust research into children and young people’s writing uncovered that just 26% of key stage 3 students said they enjoyed writing in their free time, the lowest level ever recorded by the charity (Clark et al, 2024).
This put concrete numbers to a reality already concerningly familiar to many teachers.
Co-op Academy Stoke-on-Trent is working towards embedding a writing culture which reflects twin goals – encouraging students to understand the academic importance of developing their writing skills, and to engage with writing for pleasure in a way that works for them.
Our city experiences high levels of deprivation, with 31 of the city’s 41 wards identified as having among the highest literacy vulnerability in the whole of the UK (NLT, 2016), and 51% of our school’s students are eligible for Pupil Premium. Students may transition to the school with low levels of attendance, of which one consequence is that basic reading and writing skills are often not secure.
Few students are immersed in literacy at home, as families cannot prioritise ownership of books or basic writing equipment. An absence of cultural capital also means that some students don’t have the experiences shared by their peers or general knowledge about the world around them – all of which often form the starting points of writing for pleasure.
This can be a challenge, as students can find writing difficult and perceive it solely as a means of demonstrating their learning, to complete a task, or receive a test grade.
Building social media content, composing poetry, creating fan fiction, or jotting funny and engaging message threads to friends can feel far removed from this process and are tasks that are too easily dismissed as not “real” writing.
Working with the NLT
Although literacy has been explicitly embedded in all subjects and students had previously participated in occasional writing projects, our work to embed a writing culture was boosted at the start of 2024 when we became a National Literacy Trust partner school.
The charity’s work in Stoke-on-Trent offers tailored, place-based literacy activities, but it has also raised the profile of its national projects and competitions.
Our partnership began after the charity heard about our work to embed a reading culture within the school via re-opening the school library, which I manage, and including things like free author events. We were also running a daily peer mentor programme led by our most able readers and dedicating 20 minutes a day to shared reading across key stage 3, with student voice contributing to the selection of the books used and opportunities to engage with the authors as we read.
A small group of year 7 students took on the challenge to be trained as NLT Youth Literacy Champions. They worked with a local arts company to develop, promote and run a creative writing competition, led workshops with 240 year 5 and 6 children from across the city in our local library, and judged the competition with minimal adult input.
The huge boost to their self-confidence was undeniable and chatter about the project created a buzz in school.
Wicked Writers: Be the Change
Off the back of this success, we took advantage of the students’ positivity and promoted the NLT’s national writing competition – Wicked Writers: Be the Change – for the first time. The competition is run in partnership with the musical Wicked and its education programme Wicked Active Learning. The draw of this for the students was undeniable – the possibility of winning a class trip to London and meeting an author proved a hugely popular motivation.
The theme of the competition last year was environmental change. Coincidentally our cross-key stage 3 read was Drawn to Change the World by Emma Reynolds, a graphic novel looking at the work of 16 youth climate activists.
Students responded to their shared reading with real purpose through the competition, expressing their own hopes, fears and ideas around the topic. Writing workshops took place in the library and our Youth Literacy Champions brought friends along and were joined by the younger students they had inspired in the previous year’s writing workshops.
Students' experiences of writing for grades quickly became evident, with many wanting to get their competition entry “right” first time. However, we developed confidence together by working on putting initial ideas onto paper, storyboarding, and undertaking multiple edits. They eventually started to see writing as a creative process, rather than just a task to be completed.
We were proud of the courage, determination and writing skills of one year 8 student in particular. I was lucky enough to be the first staff reader of Luo Chen’s unique story, told from the perspective of an insect, which went on to be selected as the winner of the 11 to 14 age category of the national competition. He was amazed and grateful to be able to invite 20 of his class mates to see Wicked the musical in London. Many of them had never been on a train before, or indeed to the theatre.
As the second part of Luo’s prize, a crime-writing workshop followed with author MG Leonard, who took the inspiration of the Wicked Writers experience and showed the students how to break-down their big ideas into the small decisions which shape a story.
The concept that a single idea for a character, location or plot twist can be built up into a novel inspired the students, immediately making the process less overwhelming. Pleasure began to shine through, as they could discard their “mistakes” without consequence, or adapt them into a new idea. Developing students’ authority in their own creativity has since become a key part of embedding our writing culture.
Having involved our local NLT team in our own subsequent writing projects and community events, we were delighted to be invited to join the charity at Clarence House to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Two of our student poets and I joined Luo Chen for a once-in-a-lifetime experience, meeting Queen Camilla and a host of authors.
Lowering the writing stakes
Students with a range of writing skills have taken part in the NLT competitions, prize trips and events. Using assemblies, the school newsletter, and classroom discussions to celebrate the enjoyment they have found in writing have all helped shift attitudes about who can participate (and succeed) in writing activities. We have also consciously offered a combination of high, medium and low-stakes opportunities for writing.
High-stakes projects might allow students to have their work viewed by a professional – author, journalist or university academic – and eventually by a wider audience.
Our First Story project, for example, involves weekly workshops led by author Mark Gwynne Jones with selected students who are working towards compiling a published anthology of their work. Through open dialogue with Mark and repeated practice, the group has moved from finding the abstract writing exercises extremely challenging to the point where one shy year 9 student brought a lump to my throat with the emotive content of their poem and the determination in their offer to read it aloud.
Among the tens of thousands of entries to last summer’s prestigious Foyle Young Poets Award was a surprise submission from one of our students. Staff didn’t know anything about his poems until he returned from the holiday, bursting with pride at the news that he’d received a personal response from the judges commending his work.
Other students prefer lower stakes opportunities like entering small, local competitions (where one student found herself crying with joy at receiving a second-prize-winning phone call while on her Duke of Edinburgh expedition) or joining creative writing electives and choosing whether or not to share their work with their peers.
Final thoughts
In beginning to embed a writing culture across our school, the biggest indicator of our success so far has not been the poems appearing on display boards, multiple competition entries, or the furious filling of notebooks with ideas, but the natural and confident conversations about writing which have taken place in corridors and classrooms.
Wicked Writers was undoubtedly our first big talking point, and we are hugely looking forward to the launch of the 2025 competition.
This year’s challenge asks students to write persuasively about a positive change they would like to see in their local community. Maybe one of our entrants will write about the good which will come from our wider Co-op Academy Stoke-on-Trent community discovering the power and benefits of writing!
- Sharon Corbally is library manager at Co-op Academy Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire.
Wicked Writers: Be the Change
This year’s competition, run by the National Literacy Trust and Wicked Active Learning, is now open to all UK-based students aged 9 to 14. The deadline for entries is February 28. The competition is free to enter and includes accompanying, curriculum-linked resources to support delivery. Visit https://literacytrust.org.uk/programmes/young-writers/wicked-writers-be-the-change/
Further information & resources
- Clark et al: Children and young people’s writing in 2024, NLT, 2024: https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/children-and-young-peoples-writing-in-2024/
- NLT: Identifying the places with the greatest literacy need, 2016: https://nlt.cdn.ngo/media/documents/Constituency_table_-_by_rank_-_FINAL.pdf