1.7M
children
children
Over 1 in 5 pupils
Over 1.7 million pupils in English schools speak English as an Additional Language – 21.4% of the school population, and growing
DfE School Census 2024/25, published June 2025.
A UK EdTech company · Supported by The Shackleton Foundation
Turning bilingualism
into an academic superpower
An AI-supported reading platform helping children with English as an Additional Language
transition from conversational fluency to independent academic reading
ReadTwo is a UK-incorporated, mission-locked company building bilingual reading tools for the 1.7 million pupils in England’s schools who speak English as an Additional Language. Backed by a Shackleton Foundation Leadership Award, our Brave Readers programme is running across the 2026–27 school year.
§ 01 · The challenge
One classroom, two reading worlds
One in five children in English schools speaks English as an Additional Language. Many sound fluent within two years but still struggle for years more with the academic reading their classmates do independently
1–2 yrs vs
5–7 yrs
5–7 yrs
The conversational mask
Conversational English fluency typically develops in 1 to 2 years. Academic reading fluency takes 5 to 7 years or longer. The gap is invisible at the school gate and persistent in the classroom
After Cummins
Cross-curricular
Beyond English lessons
Maths word problems, science texts, history sources. Independent academic reading is the bottleneck across the curriculum, not just in English lessons
§ 02 · The approach
Anchored in the evidence on EAL
ReadTwo’s design is anchored in The Bell Foundation’s Five Principles for Effective Teaching of EAL Learners, the UK’s leading evidence-informed framework. The principles were developed by Professor Constant Leung (King’s College London) and Emma Parsons, and are used by Ofsted, the Department for Education, and the Education Endowment Foundation.
The Five Principles guide effective EAL provision in primary and secondary schools, which is the age range the Brave Readers programme addresses.
We teach English through high-quality, culturally representative literature, with cognitively demanding but linguistically scaffolded tasks, assessed holistically across all four language modalities, in a way that treats every child’s home language as an asset and their family as a partner.
01
Multilingualism is a resource
Side-by-side reading in English and the child’s home language treats bilingualism as cognitive infrastructure, not a barrier. Translanguaging is designed for and encouraged, not corrected away.
Bell Foundation Principle 102
High expectations, language scaffolded
Children read curriculum-aligned fiction, not simplified substitutes. The Quiet AI Coach provides in-context language support that maintains the cognitive demand of the text, following Cummins’ “scaffold the language, not the thinking” principle.
Bell Foundation Principle 203
Content and language together
Sessions are designed around reading real fiction. Vocabulary, idiom and cultural context are taught in the flow of the text, with explicit language objectives drawn from the book, never as standalone drills.
Bell Foundation Principle 304
Holistic assessment
Evaluation of the Brave Readers programme is designed to capture reading, listening, speaking and comprehension separately, alongside tutor-led structured retelling, rather than reducing each child to a single composite reading age. The four-modality view follows the Bell Foundation EAL Assessment Framework.
Bell Foundation Principle 405
Belonging and family partnership
Texts curated for cultural representation. Family-facing materials available asynchronously in the child’s home language. Validating the home language as an active cognitive asset is part and parcel of our approach, ensuring pupils build academic reading independence while maintaining deep cultural roots.
Bell Foundation Principle 5The Bell Foundation publishes the Five Principles publicly to guide schools and practitioners. ReadTwo cites them as the framework informing our design and is not endorsed by or affiliated with The Bell Foundation. See bell-foundation.org.uk.
§ 03 · Brave Readers programme
Validating the approach
with the children who need it most
Our flagship Brave Readers programme runs through the 2026–27 school year with partner primary and secondary state schools in Greater London and a UK-wide online charity for displaced Ukrainian learners, and is expanding to further community and weekend educational settings across the UK to validate the approach with the children who need it most.
The “Brave Readers” programme is delivered by ReadTwo at no cost to partner schools, community organisations or families, backed by a Shackleton Foundation Leadership Award. Our first language pair is English–Ukrainian, reflecting the founder’s lived experience and an immediate, acute need. In weekly reading clubs, pupils read classic and GCSE set texts in ReadTwo’s own translations – with licensed modern titles to follow as rights are secured – supported by short, human-checked notes that explain idioms and cultural references without interrupting the story, and a dyslexia-friendly reading mode.
What the Brave Readers programme is designed to test
- Six measures, habit first: A child who does not enjoy reading will not read, so our evaluation tracks the reading habit before the reading gain. Every child is measured against their own personal starting point on the platform, never against other children.
- Building the reading habit: Regular attendance at weekly reading clubs, voluntary reading between sessions at home, and genuinely finishing chapters and full books.
- Growing independent fluency: Gains in reading pace over time, a steady decline in reliance on help cards alongside rising Independent Flight (passages read in the target language with no support), and new words learnt – tapped once for help and later read independently.
- Decision-ready evidence: Termly progress reports for each partner school, built from platform data in the language school leaders and Ofsted rely on – pupils’ names are never included in our wider evaluation data.
Language roadmap
Beyond Ukrainian
Building on our first-year evidence, we plan to trial our second language pair in September 2027 – starting with Romanian, alongside Polish, Turkish, Spanish and Cantonese – reflecting some of the largest EAL communities in UK schools and Saturday heritage classes.
Romanian
Polish
Turkish
Spanish
Cantonese
§ 04 · About the founder
A platform built first for two daughters
Hi, I’m Natalia Bulbuk, founder of ReadTwo. In 2022 I left Ukraine with my two young daughters during the war. As they began school in the UK, I watched them hit a barrier I now recognise as the academic plateau: confident in everyday English within months, but struggling for years with the academic texts their classmates were reading independently.
I have spent more than 20 years in data science and AI, most recently in senior data leadership roles. I built the first version of what became ReadTwo for my daughters. It worked.
What I built turned out to align closely with the evidence-informed approaches behind The Bell Foundation’s framework for EAL teaching – the UK’s leading body of practice in this field. That alignment gave me the confidence to take ReadTwo from a personal lifeline into a real product.
Backed by a Shackleton Foundation Leadership Award, our 2026–27 Brave Readers programme is validating the approach with the children who need it most, ahead of wider school rollout.
§ 05 · Get in touch
Three ways to start a conversation
01 · Schools
Schools
We are opening paid school partnerships for the 2027–28 academic year, with school budget conversations beginning in Spring 2027. Register your interest to see our termly progress reports and shape the rollout.
02 · Publishers & Partners
Publishers, rights holders & EAL partners
We license contemporary children’s and YA fiction through upfront licence fees for the Brave Readers programme and commercial revenue-share agreements – opening a new bilingual school and family market for your titles. Books are delivered in a closed, login-protected environment with human-checked cultural notes and are never used to train AI models. We also welcome conversations with EAL researchers, foundations and literacy networks.
03 · Families
Families
For Ukrainian-speaking and other EAL families: we know how quickly English can take over and a home language can fade. Our family product is in development, with beta access after the Brave Readers 2026–27 programme. Join the waitlist to hear first.
§ 06 · Safeguarding
Safeguarding
ReadTwo is committed to the safety and wellbeing of every child we work with. Brave Readers sessions involving children take place through partner schools and organisations and under their safeguarding policies, and anyone working directly with children on the Brave Readers programme is subject to an enhanced DBS check. Children never register or interact with ReadTwo directly – participation is always arranged through a school or a parent – and we collect only the minimum information necessary. By design, children cannot message each other on the platform and never chat with a live AI: every help card is prepared in advance and checked by a human reviewer before release. All pupil data on the platform is stored in the UK and Europe. For any safeguarding question, contact [email protected].