THE RIDGEWAY School celebrated world book week by launching its own brand-new audiobook service.

Sporty students at the launch combined learning and fitness by listening to stories as they took on treadmill exercises in the gym. Principal James Povoas encouraged students to get involved with the novel scheme by testing his own endurance at Thursday’s event.

Sarah-Kate Tonkin, a librarian at the school, said: “The staff at Ridgeway school are huge fans of reading, both to promote relaxation but also to support students’ abilities to do well in all of their subjects. Recent studies have shown that children who read for pleasure have a 10 per cent advantage in maths over those who don’t, but reading is about so much more than decoding marks on a page.

“The advantage of whetting their appetites with an audio book is that they can get the benefits of the written word – increasing their vocabulary, developing the love of a good story – without the barriers that a paper book sometimes brings.”

Library staff worked closely with the PE department to bring the service to the school. Students can access the audiobooks by computer or phone app, allowing them to listen to a range of fiction and non-fiction titles in situations where text-based reading would be difficult.

Works by Shakespeare, Roald Dahl, J.K Rowling, Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters are just some of the options available to students who want to listen to stories during journeys or workouts.

Sarah-Kate Tonkin added: “Listening to books while training is seen to be the best of both worlds: sporty pupils who don’t love reading have a way of accessing a good story, while a student who is engrossed in an exciting plot will stay on the treadmill for a bit longer.

“When there is a book with which students have struggled in text format, they might find it comes alive when it is being read to them by Tom Baker or Ian McKellen.”