On 13 April 2021, Cressida Cowell, the Waterstones Children’s Laureate, and author of the popular ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ series, wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson launching her Life-changing Libraries project. The project aims to highlight the importance of library spaces for primary schools and calls for ring-fenced funding for school libraries.
Millions of children, particularly those from the poorest communities in the UK and those worst hit by the pandemic, are missing out on opportunities to discover the life-changing magic of reading. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international organisation that works to build better policies for better lives, has carried out research suggesting that reading is a key indicator in a child’s future success, showing that readers for pleasure are more likely to be happier, healthier, to do better at school, and then to go on to vote in later life – all irrespective of their background. The OECD research suggests that this is because reading for pleasure is a key indicator of a child’s educational success, even more so than their parent’s socio-economic status.
OFSTED has also recognised the vital role that reading for pleasure plays and found that children using their school library were more likely to read for pleasure and had better reading and writing attitudes. But how can a child become a reader for pleasure if they have limited access to books? Or their school has no library, or if that library is woefully insufficient? Whilst this is a really exciting project for the state education sector, my reason for mentioning it, is that it is a really positive vindication of the approach towards libraries and reading that we are lucky enough to already have at Barrow Hills.
Following the total revamp of the Prep Library in the summer of 2019, there has been a huge amount of time and effort spent on making our school libraries work hard for our children, and in September (when hopefully the last of the current restrictions will have been lifted), I am looking forward to maintaining this exciting trajectory.
Despite Covid, we have managed to continuously run lunchtime library clubs throughout the year allowing children to play board and card games and read and share books. The library has also been used by a number of class lessons and small group sessions during the school day.
During the most recent lockdown, the staff and I spent time updating the class reading book sets, introducing a number of new titles to our range, with more still in the pipeline for next year. As part of our World Book Day celebrations, we received lots of lovely book donations from parents, allowing us to update our fiction and targeted non-fiction ranges to appeal to a wide range of readers, and supporting specific topics areas, across the school. I have also personally enjoyed sending personalised book list recommendations to some of our parents/children too.
During the final term of this year, we will be holding a ‘Story Time & Afternoon Tea’ for the youngest children in the school and a ‘Play in a Day’ workshop for the oldest, and hopefully use of the library space, access to books and the range of literary based activities will only expand as we move into the 2021/22 academic year.
Mrs Emmett, Librarian
