Last June, Deloitte Jersey began an exciting new partnership with local charity Every Child Our Future (ECOF) as part of Deloitte’s One Million Futures initiative. Aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, One Million Futures focuses on reducing inequality and helping people to overcome barriers to education and employment.

In partnership with the States of Jersey Department of Education, ECOF delivers the expert provision of trained practitioners in Reading Recovery, Boosted Reading and numeracy programmes at local primary schools. The charity also assists with the recruitment, vetting and training of volunteers to regularly read with those children who are just behind their age-related level. The charity’s work on the island already involves 540 volunteers, helping 800 children across 19 schools.

As part of Deloitte One Million Futures, Deloitte aims to support people to get to where they want to be, through access to education and employment, raising aspirations, improving skills and developing leaders – so we are delighted to be working with a charity like ECOF.

ECOF wants children in Jersey to reach their age-related standards in literacy and numeracy at Key Stage 2, they do this by providing early intervention in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.

Over the past 12 months, 30 trained volunteers from Deloitte’s Jersey office have spent a total of 365 hours engaged in various activities with the charities, and a total of £2,550 has been raised for the charity through raffles, bingo events and the Deloitte Jersey Coronavirus Fundraising Appeal.

Numeracy Pilot

The last year has been particularly exciting for Deloitte as its involvement with ECOF has been focused on a pilot numeracy project at Springfield School.

The numeracy pilot was designed to help children enhance their basic numeracy skills; it aims to build confidence and enjoyment in working with numbers. Reception and Year 1 pupils who were not reaching their early learning goals were chosen to participate.

The activities were designed to reinforce familiarity with numbers by playing numerical games. The one-to-one interaction between Deloitte’s volunteers and the pupils has given the children the confidence and resilience in their abilities and approach to numeracy.

The results from the first stage of the pilot showed that every child made progress in the first six weeks of the programme, which started at the end of the summer term.

The programme continued the following term, with the same cohort of children tackling the curriculum of their new school year.

The teachers’ feedback has been very positive, noting that the children’s confidence has increased, not just in numeracy, but across all subjects; it’s clear that they have benefited from the focus of one-to-one support and they are enjoying their lessons more.

At Deloitte, we talk about ‘making an impact that matters’; in time, the numeracy pilot scheme will expand to other schools in Jersey and we are very proud to play a very small part in helping to make this happen and drive forward meaningful support for the island’s children in education.

‘Every Child Our Future has seen many children on the island benefit hugely from the support given to us by Deloitte. Deloitte has been instrumental in helping to launch our numeracy support scheme at Springfield School, which has been a great success and is now being expanded into more local schools. Every Child Our Future is extremely grateful for all the support Deloitte has provided us with and we look forward to continuing with this successful partnership.’ Lucy Le Poidevin, Programmes Manager, Every Child Our Future.

Fundraising Events

Over the course of the year, Deloitte Jersey has organised several successful fundraising events, raising a considerable amount of money for ECOF. These events included raffles, bingo and Secret Santa.

Siobhan Durcan, Partner commented, ‘Deloitte is extremely proud of the work we do with ECOF and the positive impact we have had on our community. We are excited to continue this partnership and expand our volunteering services over the next two years into other schools. The role the charity plays in Jersey’s society is an invaluable one.’