Education charity Reading Quest, which supports mostly disadvantaged youngsters falling behind with literacy and numeracy, is going from strength to strength a year on from winning the Working Together prize at the annual Oxfordshire Charity and Volunteer Awards.

The award was given for ‘the best initiative involving the voluntary and private sectors working together’. The charity won the honour after producing its first maths app, Numbugs, with the Royal Bank of Scotland and University College London.

In just 12 months, Numbugs has been downloaded more than 10,000 times and is available on all platforms free for use at home and in schools. But not content with that, the Reading Quest team is working on adding other elements to the app to enable youngsters to have more targeted help in improving their number skills.

Director Jayne Lacny said: ‘Winning the award given by OCVA was such an honour. We’ve had a great response to the app and we believe the additions are going to make it even better.

“Yet the charity’s work is never done as Reading Quest is passionate about giving children a boost in their learning and improving their life chances.”

The charity was initially set up to support literacy, but introduced numeracy three years ago (Numeracy Quest). It has gone from working in Oxfordshire to launching a training arm to run courses nationally for teachers and teaching assistants.

It is piloting a new maths teaching innovation, called Numskills, in which its specialised tutors (not volunteers) are working in schools in Oxford city to help youngsters with mental maths through game playing.

“This project comes about through collaboration with Oxford Brookes University and we think it is going to give a substantial boost to children who don’t feel good about maths,” said Jayne Lacny.

Literacy has far from been forgotten. Reading Quest now boasts an updated one-to-one teaching model for children at primary and in the lower years of secondary school. It has also created a group teaching model, BookQuest, for children in Key Stage 2 to improve comprehension and writing.

The charity would be delighted to hear from any school interested in its work, or from volunteers keen to fundraise.

E-mail info@readingquest.org.uk or ring 01865 403207.

If you would like to nominate a charity or a special volunteer in Oxfordshire for the Oxfordshire Charity and Volunteer Awards 2015, please see www.ocva.org.uk/awards2015