Make school libraries mandatory, MPs urge

The recommendation is one of a raft of suggestions put forward by the Education Committee following its probe into reading for pleasure.

It comes amid the Government’s National Year of Reading, which aims to tackle the decline in children and young people’s enjoyment of reading, which hit a 20-year low last year.

The cross-party committee also said every child in England should be issued with a library card from birth, that “fun must come first” when getting children to read in the early years, and that the school curriculum should be changed to commit to developing a love of reading.

MPs called school libraries “powerful equalisers”, adding: “It is striking that libraries are statutory requirements in prisons, but not schools.

“The department should extend its pledge to fund a library in every primary school to include every secondary school, and follow this up by placing school libraries on a statutory footing.”

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They also called for the Government to restore funding for public libraries and introduce an auto-enrolment scheme through which every child is given a library card on registration of their birth.

On the early years, the committee said “joy must lead the way”, quoting former children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce who gave evidence to the inquiry saying: “No parent says to a child, ‘When you’ve learned the offside rule, then I’ll play football with you’, no parent says to a child, ‘When you’ve learned how to catch and gut a cod, then you can have a fish finger’."

Later in school life, the “overloaded curriculum and heavy focus on assessment” crowds out opportunities to foster the joy of reading, MPs said.

They highlighted particular concern about the GCSE English literature curriculum, recommending it be revised to include a core objective of children developing a love of and interest in books and that the diversity of texts is improved.

Specifically, they said the definition of literature from the British isles should be expanded to “literature in English”, and the requirement for a 19th century novel should be extended to a longer period.

The committee also called for more national moments to promote reading like World Book Day to be established, and for the Department for Education (DfE) to turn the National Year of Reading into a National Decade of Reading.

Committee chairwoman Helen Hayes called reading for pleasure a “miracle medicine” that improves school performance and expands children’s worldview.

"We should be extremely concerned that so few children currently say they enjoy reading or regularly pick up a book,” she said.

“We know that children from disadvantaged backgrounds or those with additional needs are less likely to develop a love of reading, but access to literature should never be a luxury available only to the most prosperous families.

“We need to start taking action as early in a child’s life as possible, before disadvantage is baked in.

“But we do not need to lose hope. Our report published today sets out concrete steps the Government can take to put pleasure and fun back into childhood reading.

“None of this is inevitable. It’s time to write a new ending to this story and make reading for pleasure a possibility for every child.”

Screen time was highlighted as a “major factor” squeezing the time children spend reading for pleasure, and the committee urged the Government to implement all of the recommendations in its response to the Growing up in the Online World consultation.

In the response, MPs called for a statutory social media ban for under-16s as well as measures to restrict harmful features and functionalities to protect children who manage to circumvent restrictions.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced such a ban last month, and plans were unveiled on Wednesday which will see 16 and 17-year-olds prevented from accessing social media sites between midnight and 6am by default.

The measures, announced by Technology Secretary Liz Kendall, will also see addictive features such as auto-scrolling and algorithmic feeds turned off.

Ministers have defended the plans from critics who questioned their effectiveness, given teenagers will be able to turn off features such as curfews.

Children and young people’s enjoyment of reading rose for the first time in five years this year after tumbling to a 20-year low last year, according to a National Literacy Trust survey of more than 125,000 youngsters aged five to 18 from across the UK.

The DfE has been contacted for comment.