THE National Year of Reading has been a landmark in education, involving parents, businesses and members of the public in working alongside schools to help youngsters achieve their full reading potential.

And it won't stop there; the "Read On" initiative will ensure that the momentum continues for at least another three years.

The Lancashire Evening Telegraph has been deeply involved in supporting the high profile reading initiative from its onset through our Newspapers in Education project and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future.

In this school year alone, over 2,500 pupils in primary, secondary and special schools throughout East Lancashire have been helped towards their literacy targets by our Super Story Search and NIE Sport Extra material and another hundred are due to participate in the schemes in summer schools.

In addition, at least 1,150 students have achieved numeracy targets in our Maths Motivation project.

Many of these students have also made educational visits to see production of our newspaper.

Hundreds of other pupils and teachers have been involved in our six different monthly projects running from January to June this year, linked to themes suggested by the National Literacy Trust. These ranged from Internet Awareness days (funded by the Teacher Placement Service) to competitions inviting youngsters to submit film reviews, poems, reports and even photographs.

A selection of the winning entries will be published in the summer holiday period.

Superb prizes have been presented to deserving winners during the year.

In particular, we are grateful to the Apollo Cinema in Burnley, photographer Jack Barry, publishers Dorling Kindersley, Heli 2000, Blackpool (helicopter flight company), Pendle Wavelengths, Nelson, and Waves Water Fun Centre, Blackburn, for their very generous support.

Schools have been notified of NIE material on offer for the autumn term.

This includes a project celebrating 2000 years of local history plus our "Time Capsule" millennium supplement for schools, as well as our continuing literacy and numeracy material.

For more details of these, or any aspect of our NIE scheme, please contact NIE co-ordinator Rita Shaw, telephone 01254 678678, ext 255.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.