The Letterbox Club is a project managed by Booktrust in partnership with the University of Leicester.

It focuses on improving the educational outlook for children aged 7-11 in foster families by providing them with a parcel of books, maths activities and educational materials once every month for six months. Each child participating in the scheme will receive the parcels directly addressed to them at home.

Research shows that children in care underachieve in education, but evaluation from pilots of the Letterbox Club showed a demonstrable impact. Many children began to make more significant changes in their standardised score in reading.

Booktrust has received support from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to extend the programme to 1,600 children in 2007-2008 with a view to involving all children in this age range in foster care from 2009 onwards.

Letterbox Club parcels were sent out in June 2007 when 23 local authorities, spread geographically across the government regions began participating, with a view to all local authorities who wish to, participating from 2009 onwards.

Each Letterbox Club parcel arrives in a brightly coloured package, addressed to the child. Each child receives a letter and a range of books that have been carefully selected by the panel at Booktrust for the children in the scheme. They also receive number games and a range of stationery items.

For example the July 2008 parcel for Year 5 contained:

Stig of the Dump by Clive King (book & cd) link?
A book of poetry, The Sun in Me ed Judith Nicholls
An exercise book
A pencil, rubber & pencil sharpener
A calculator
A4 zip top wallet
A maths game at the child’s own level such as, Counting Cats Game

Find out about the books we included in parcels during 2007 and 2008

Over the six month period the parcels will also include other items such as a library joining card or information about how to join a library, name plates, bookmarks and letters from a selection of children’s authors.

We are developing a varied list of possible materials to be added. For example, the October 2007 parcels contained a complimentary current copy of First News, the children’s newspaper; and during 2007 we included a letter written by Jacqueline Wilson along with one of her books. This year we have included a letter from Michael Rosen to accompany his titles.

After being a member of the Letterbox Club for six months the child will have built up their own small library of books, a collection of number games and a variety of stationery items.

Download the Letterbox Club 2009 Partnership Agreement

Read the report about the Leicester pilot scheme (Microsoft Word .doc download 87.5Kb)

Read the Letterbox Club Winter 2007 newsletter (Adobe Acrobat .pdf format 2.86Mb)