Texthelp – the global technology company helping learners of all ages to improve their reading, writing and maths skills – has won best ‘International Digital Education Resource’ in the UK’s BETT Awards 2020 for its flagship Read&Write product.
Read&Write is a software toolbar with literacy support features designed to help teachers deliver inclusive, personalised learning experiences to all students – and assist every member of the class in meeting their full potential.
For educators, it is a time-saver, making curriculum materials accessible to suit every student’s personal learning style. It also helps teachers ‘Reach Every Learner’, providing tailored multi-lingual support for high achievers right through to students with specific literacy challenges.
In an independent, year-long study of children in their first year of secondary school, conducted during the 2017/18 academic year, 66% of Read&Write users improved their reading age and confidence levels over the course of the year, compared with 27% of non Read&Write users. In addition, whilst significant pressures of the first year of secondary school can push students’ reading and writing into decline, the study found the measurable quality of writing improved by 3.5% amongst Read&Write users.
Commenting on the award win, Texthelp CEO, Mark McCusker said: “For one of our leading products, Read&Write, to have won best International Digital Education Resource is an important milestone for Texthelp. This is an accolade that 
we have been working towards for several years, and it is really exciting to receive the recognition for the impact Read&Write has on learning outcomes. The anecdotal feedback received from users, and the findings from an independent study into the efficacy of the products, shows Read&Write has a significant impact on learning outcomes.
“It is our mission is to help unlock everyone’s full ability and realise their potential through this innovative technology, which they can continue to use throughout their working life. This recent win is, in part, an acknowledgement of the progress we have made towards this goal over the past 20 years. As one of the most established technology companies in this sector, Texthelp is also uniquely positioned to extract hugely valuable insights from our global data sets. This enables us to identify the key challenges in education today and create software that can help/support educators in solving them.”
Read&Write makes files, documents and the web more accessible on a wide range of devices and platforms, including Windows, Mac, Google Chrome, iPad and Android. The intuitive toolbar sits on top of applications like Microsoft Word and Google Docs to help students whenever needed with a wide range of literacy tasks – from reading and understanding classroom materials to coursework and independent study. Translation support is available in almost 100 languages and growing, whilst Read&Write’s toolbar interface is accessible in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Dutch and Portuguese.
The company’s WriQ product was also shortlisted for best ‘Classroom Aids For Learning Teaching and Assessment’ for WriQ – a Chrome extension for Google Docs that automatically marks papers digitally.
