Alan Gibbons’ Blog

Campaign for the Book open letter.

Make school libraries statutory

“Reading for pleasure is a better indicator of academic success than wealth or social class” – OECD /UNESCO 2002

Dear Mr Balls,

I recently organized a petition calling on Her Majesty’s Government to make school libraries statutory. The petition received the support of 5,707 people and also drew the support of organizations including Cilip, ASCEL, the National Literacy Trust and the SLA. As you will know, HMG rejected the petition restating its position that it gives money to schools to support reading and permits them to decide how to do it.

I think this position is wrong. Without a librarian to coordinate reading for pleasure and information retrieval, schools will fail to promote literacy at the highest level. The Department of Children Schools and Families instructs schools on many policies. Why not reading, one of the most fundamental pillars of learning? As you yourself said recently:

“There’s nothing better then getting lost in a good book and reading can open up new worlds for young people.”

Indeed, you backed a scheme in which more than 53,000 free books have been sent to England’s secondary schools in an attempt to get more pupils reading.

A room stocked with good books is essential. But it is even better if the library is integrated with teaching and learning. A good school librarian who is given adequate resources helps develop such integration. Such an individual quite simply changes lives for the better.

Ofsted has recently concluded that not enough children, especially boys, read for pleasure and it is affecting their life chances. Making school libraries statutory is essential to changing that picture. Even in these difficult times, this measure would be cost effective, considering the social consequences of poor literacy levels.

I will be discussing with my friends and colleagues in the professional associations and public sector trade unions engaged in this field how we can strengthen our campaign to persuade your Government to change its mind.

Yours faithfully,

Alan Gibbons

The Campaign for the Book

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.