Bury St Edmunds school Tollgate Primary’s literacy fundraiser surpasses 10,000,000-seconds target

A literacy fundraiser that fostered a love of reading between a school community has been declared a huge success.

Tollgate Primary School, in Bury St Edmunds, launched their month-long ‘Ten Million Moments’ event to encourage pupils, families, staff and governors to read for 10,000,000 seconds.

The sponsored event raised more than £2,000 for school books which will also include inside the names of pupils who fundraised for them.

The ambitious target was eclipsed with more than five million seconds of reading surpassed in the first week and a final tally of 19,914,030 seconds recorded.

Richard Fuller, assistant headteacher who organised the event, said: “Literacy is a huge part of the curriculum at Tollgate so we wanted to do something that truly captured a love of reading.

“We also wanted to encourage pupils and families to read together alongside staff members and governors.

“We were blown away by how pupils responded to the challenge. It was an amazing event and we would like to thank everyone who made it such a success.”

Every second read by the school community was logged and tracked with a fundraising prize draw also taking place thanks to book voucher donations from Jardine BMW.

A total of £2,183 was raised with pupils helping to choose around 300 new books for their individual class libraries.