Cressida Cowell launches ‘Life-changing Libraries’ campaign

April 13th 2021

We all know the benefits of school libraries and the positive impact that reading for pleasure has on pupils’ wellbeing and attainment, but did you know that 1 in 8 primary schools in the UK currently has no library space at all?

Today Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell launched a new ‘Life-changing Libraries’ campaign to highlight the importance of school libraries for children, and called for the government to put school libraries front and centre as part of their response to the pandemic.

Cressida has written an open letter to Boris Johnson asking for £100m of funding to be ring-fenced each year for building new libraries and restoring neglected ones each year. She argues that millions of children are “missing out on opportunities to discover the life-changing magic of reading”.

With school library funding already having been cut during recent years, Covid-19 has only made the impacts of this more strongly felt, with fears that literacy levels have dropped severely during the pandemic.

The Sunday Times recently reported that unpublished government figures have revealed that more than 200,000 pupils are set to enter secondary school this autumn without being able to read properly – a rise of 30,000 since last year. And it is children from some of the most disadvantaged areas who are being most significantly impacted, as they are less likely to have books at home and schools with a higher proportion of children on free school meals were more than twice as likely not to have access to a designated library space. (Great School Libraries, 2019).   

Life-changing Libraries seeks to address this by imploring government to place school libraries front and centre and at the heart of every primary school.

“School libraries are an essential tool: in 2019, the National Literacy Trust and Nottingham Trent University found that children using their school library were more likely to read for pleasure and had better reading and writing attitudes - this difference was especially marked for those eligible for free school meals.”

"Over time, £100m a year would enable every primary school in England to invest in the key areas of library excellence - books, expertise, space - that their pupils so urgently need. For example, a boost of £28m could enable the one in eight primary schools without a library to develop space, buy stock, develop expertise and access a school library service; £75m per year would employ a part-time, expert librarian; and £60m per year allows schools to purchase one new book a year for each child."

As part of the Life-changing Libraries project, six very different primary schools across England - all of which have at least 25% of pupils eligible for free school meals - will be helped to develop a reading for pleasure culture over the next year.

Each school will receive a bespoke library space, stocked with a specially curated booklist of approximately 1,000 titles chosen by BookTrust's expert team with guidance from the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.

Staff at the schools will also receive professional training and mentoring from specialists at the School Library Association as part of a two-year membership, and will also have access to the CLPE's Power of Reading Training and Membership.

Life-changing Libraries is inspired by Cressida's 20 years of experience visiting schools and is backed by research into the benefits of reading for pleasure and the challenging financial reality facing primary school libraries. It will highlight the four pillars of a 'gold standard' school library - space, book provision, expertise and whole-school and parent involvement.

Cressida reads her full letter to the government here. 

Find out more about the Life-changing Libraries campaign.