Sunday, 15 July 2012

Book-free schools - your research please!

Please note:

Some schools believe in books, comics and magazines galore for children. Some local authorities believe in this. I have documented this kind of provision before and will do it again. Indeed, if anyone reading this wants to write a guest blog on their school's excellent provision of books and, just as importantly, its ability to put books in the hands of children from homes where there are no or very few books, then I will be delighted to post it up. Please, please send that in.

For the moment though, , this is the other side of the coin. What is going on where there are very few books? How few? How do children, who don't have access to books at home, get hold of the reading habit? How do they learn how to read for meaning? ie real reading of real texts?

Please send me  your comments care of facebook, twitter or my email:

State whether you want to remain anonymous, to use a pen-name, your first name or your whole name.

Here are some comments concerning schools and colleges with very poor book provision:

Janine Charles wrote the following comment about her child's school:

" I'm so disappointed to find that her school has only a few books in each classroom and in common with lots of primary schools - no library at all."

Richard Birmingham:

".. in the college where I teach there are virtually no books in the library......"

Jenny Neal:

" .My children's school doesn't have a library, they do have limited space as am sure is the case in many schools. However my daughter announced to me in year four that she had read nearly all the books available to her at school so was now going to be bringing her own.This shows our need for using the library services as I couldn't possibly store or afford to buy the amount of books she can devour!
It is our local library we use, and now in year six many of her friends bring their own books or library books to school."

Nigel Grant "believes" that "Coopers School, Chislehurst, replaced most library books with computers years ago".