A successful campaign by the London Evening Standard to help children with their reading is to be rolled out to regional newspapers.

The paper’s Get London Reading campaign has raised more than £1m for charity Beanstalk to recruit and train reading mentors for schoolchildren.

A similar drive will be launched by the Yorkshire Evening Post this month in a bid to tackle the problem of children leaving primary school who are unable to read to the required standard.

The charity is also in discussions with other regional titles which it hopes to launch similar campaigns with.

YEP features editor Jayne Dawson said:  “We are really pleased to be working with Beanstalk on such an important campaign.

“There is nothing more vital in education than learning to read, but a distressing number of children in Leeds leave their primary school without this basic skill.

“There are many reasons why this happens and it is a complex issue but we know that, by going into schools and mentoring children,  Beanstalk do make a difference.

“One of our most important roles as a city newspaper is to work with the community, and we are confident that Leeds people will help us with this worthwhile cause, as they have done so many times before.”

Beanstalk CEO Sue Porto said: “After the success of Get London Reading, I sent a letter to all the newspaper groups in the areas where we work saying we would be delighted to run something similar.

“As a result of that the Evening Post got in touch. That is how this idea was born.

“We want to recruit 40 new Reading Helpers to enable us to double the number of children we support in Leeds from 120 to 240. To achieve and sustain this growth we are aiming to raise at least £40,000 in our 40th anniversary year.”

The campaign with the Evening Post will run for three months and will include daily features in the first week, including details of its work in schools and the implications of illiteracy in adult life.

It aims to raise awareness of the issue of illiteracy in Leeds, encourage people to become reading helpers and raise funds to enable the charity to train and support them.

Beanstalk volunteers to work with primary school children aged from six to 11 who find reading a challenge and each volunteer goes into a local school twice a week for a year.