School of Rock actor Jack Black backs Essex parents' literacy campaign to 'turn on the subtitles'

Actor, rock star and everyone's favourite substitute teacher Jack Black has thrown his weight behind a literacy campaign urging parents to turn on the subtitles when watching television.

The Tenacious D singer filmed a message where he reveals his top tip for how "to be awesome".

"Whether your child wants to be an awesome movie star, or an awesome musician, an awesome president or just generally an awesome person, they will be way more awesome if they can read," explains actor, who played teacher Dewey Finn in School of Rock.

The video has been created by campaign group Turn On The Subtitles (TOTS), which was started by a group of Essex parents, and will be sent out in an email to all schools in the UK and many in the US.

Since the Covid pandemic, the number of primary school children reaching expected levels of literacy has fallen.

According to the qualifications watchdog OfQual, the number of Key Stage 1 pupils (five to seven-year-olds) meeting the expected standard in reading was 67% in 2022 - down from 75% in 2019 - while writing dropped from 69% to 58%.

For children from disadvantaged backgrounds, just 51% reached the expected reading level by the end of KS1.

"Who ya gonna call? Who can save us in our hour of need?" asks Black, who also starred in The Holiday and the 2017 remake of Jumanji. "The subtitles!

"Just press the button and you will blow their tiny little minds with knowledge! Now let's get reading!"

Turn On The Subtitles was started during the pandemic by parents who decided to see what impact watching television with captions had on their own children having read some research about it.

Henry Warren, who co-founded the campaign alongside Oli Barrett and Nina Hale, said: "Just by having the subtitles on, in one year the average child will read the same number of words that are in all of the Harry Potter books, all of the Narnia books, all of the Lord of the Rings, and everything that Roald Dahl ever wrote, combined.

"That's why it doubles the chance of a child leaving school as a proficient reader."

Nine-year-old Jasmine Hale said she did not even notice the words on screen any more.

"Before I was not very confident with my reading but now I'm super confident," she said.

"Before I was also bad at my grammar. I didn't really put full stops. But now I put them quite a lot in my sentences and I put them where I'm meant?] to."

TOTS, which is also supported by Countdown's Rachel Riley, Stephen Fry and Sandi Toksvig, hopes to reach eight million household in the UK and nearly 56 million in the US with Black's email.

But Mr Warren said his ultimate aim was for the group to no longer be needed.

"We would like to be forgotten," he said. "We would like the assumption to be that subtitles are always on for children's TV programmes, in the same way we have fluoride in the water, we have subtitles on the TV."

And for anyone wondering how to get a Hollywood star to get on board with their campaign, the TOTS founder said it was surprisingly simple.

"We just rang him and asked," said Mr Warren. "He's passionate about education and he wanted to help."

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