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Save the book!
Reading for pleasure gives children a huge educational advantage. Yet library budgets are being cut and schools, unlike prisons, aren’t legally required to have a library. Children’s author and NUT member Alan Gibbons explains why this has prompted him to set up the Campaign for the Book.
Ask any teacher to identify the most important factors in determining the social and emotional wellbeing and academic success of the children they teach, and the habit of reading for pleasure will be high on the list. It isn’t just teachers who think this way. This quote should be emblazoned on the walls of every school in the UK:
“Reading for pleasure is a better indicator of academic success than wealth or social class.” OECD/Unesco 2002
So why is reading for pleasure not at the heart of government policy? Why are they so wedded to ‘excerptitis’ and the stale filleting of bits of stories? Why do only half of UK secondary schools have a full-time librarian? Why is the quality of primary school libraries so variable and lacking in central direction? Why are school library budgets being squeezed when the UK has tumbled in international comparisons of reading attainment? Why, according to one Arts Council officer, do only a tenth of British schools invite authors in to speak to their pupils?
A year ago a series of events alerted me to the inadequacy of government support for libraries. I was invited to speak to a campaign group in Doncaster where over £600,000 was being cut from the library budget. Just weeks later the headteacher at the Meadows school in Chesterfield, Lynn Asquith, closed the library and made librarian Clare Broadbelt redundant.
I appealed to my fellow writers to protest against this scandalous act of cultural philistinism. Within days Philip Pullman, Beverley Naidoo, Bernard Ashley and dozens of others had bombarded Mrs Asquith with letters of protest.
I soon discovered that other school librarians were facing cuts in their budgets, pay and conditions, and even redundancy. Out of these events the Campaign for the Book was born. Its nine-point founding charter (which can be viewed in full at www.alangibbons.net) was designed to raise the profile of reading and protect public and school
libraries and school library services.
Our greatest challenge came when the Labour/Liberal Democrat Wirral council tried to close 11 of its branch libraries. A mass protest forced the Department of Culture to call an enquiry and the council performed a U-turn, saving the libraries.
In July 2009 librarians, authors, publishers, teachers, booksellers and members of the public gathered in Birmingham to discuss the issues facing the reading community. The debates confirmed what we had all been thinking privately: the government does not have a consistent and rigorous national policy to promote reading.
Former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen tried to convince Education Minister Ed Balls to adopt his ‘20 points to get schools reading’. The response was less than adequate. Education and culture ministers are prepared to sponsor reading promotions through the Booktrust, Reading Agency and National Literacy Trust. That is very welcome but falls short of a national policy.
This issue is of vital importance to teachers. A reading child is a successful child. When a child chooses to read in his or her own time then, almost by osmosis, they learn to write well. Reading also develops imagination, creativity, self-esteem and curiosity,
the wellspring of learning.
So what can you do?
• Email
aagibbons@blueyonder.co.uk to sign up to our regular campaign newsletter. It will give you details of initiatives you can support in your area. There is more news on my blog at
www.alangibbons.net.
• Write to your MP asking why school libraries are not statutory in the same way prison libraries rightly are.
It is urgent that we defend our libraries. As Joni Mitchell once sang: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
Alan Gibbons is an award-winning children’s author and organiser of the Campaign for the Book. He is a member of the NUT and the
Society of Authors.
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