Hi guys,

So, at the start of this year during an assembly about New Year's Resolutions, I made the bold claim that I was going to run a marathon to help the school I work at (Orchard C of E Primary in Broughton Astley) in some way. After much thought, I've decided that all the money will go towards reading resources to encourage the children in our school to read more and hopefully inspire their writing as well. Therefore, I'm running the Leicester Marathon on Sunday 23rd October in aid of this. As part of this, the children in school will also be doing a 'Reading Marathon' to help raise money. There task will be to read 26 books ( 1 for each mile I'll be running/hobbling) between now and October 23rd.

At this point, it's probably worth me explaining why a school who is funded by the government deserves your money to help it. In recent years, there have been significant cuts to all school budgets across the country. At Orchard, the headteacher (Ms Fieldsend), the governors and all members of staff do an excellent job of ensuring that the money we get in our budget is spent in the best possible way and directly benefits each and every child. This was proven by our recent 'Good' Ofsted grading. However, any extra cash will further support this and continue to further enhance the experience of all the children in the school.

So, myself and roughly 200 children are asking you to donate what you can to help us improve reading within our school. Surely that has got to be worth a quid or two? Plus, you get the added bonus of knowing that I've got 26.2 miles of pure suffering to get through as well. I'm sure many of you will feel that is worth a bit of money alone!

Thank you for reading this and hopefully sponsoring us!

All the best

Paul Bolstridge