Great School Libraries - read all about it!

Chris Riddell, Christina Clark, Cressida Cowell and Nick Poole at the launch of the Great School Libraries Survey Findings

How can it be that having a library and regular inspections of its services is a statutory obligation in prisons - but not for schools?

This, reader, though, is the case in the UK.

Sure, of course, prisons must have libraries.

But so must schools!

And yet our schools are under no obligation to provide their pupils and teachers a library. Inspecting a school’s library provision is not a requirement for Ofsted inspections.

So no wonder cash-pressed Heads often choose to cut the librarian or the library from their institutions. Indeed only 38% of primary schools have a librarian.

One in eight schools does not have a school library at all.

All this is shown in the findings of a brilliant new report commissioned by CILIP (The library and information Association), the SLA (School Library Association), School Libraries Group, and sponsored by Peters and The Foyle Foundation.

Making the argument for libraries is always tough. Even for school libraries. Librarians aren’t always the most vociferous individuals by nature and often they aren’t given a voice within schools, deprived of the sorts of access to senior staff and not granted the respect other members of teaching staff routinely receive.

So this evidence-based report is huge.

As Cressida Cowell, who spoke so eloquently at the survey’s launch last night (alongside Nick Poole of CILIP, Alison Tarrant, CEO of SLA, and Cressida’s predecessor as Children’s Laureate, Chris Riddell), has made clear: it’s time providing a school library and librarian is a statutory requirement. It MUST be part of the Ofsted reporting process (Scotland has recently decreed that it will be, in another example of the Scots leading the way on literacy and social infrastructure).

Because the kids who don’t get the benefit of a library are the ones who most need it - the neediest boys and girls.

The ones who most need a quiet space to do their homework because they lack somewhere appropriate at home.

A space where they can discover new pathways of learning and imagination.

The ones who don’t have internet access or a computer they can use at home.

The ones whose parents can’t afford to buy them books.

The ones whose public library maybe has just closed down.

It’s a postcode lottery, basically, as usual - this report proves - and once again, it’s the most deprived areas who are least likely to have such key provisions in their schools.

It’s a ‘social mobility timebomb’, in Cowell’s words.

It’s time we got real about investing in the future generations of this country. School libraries and librarians are not expensive. The returns, though, are massive. As this excellent report now proves incontrovertibly.