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School librarians are unable to buy the range of books they want due to budget cuts, meaning children are not getting access to non-fiction and diverse titles, library professionals have told The Bookseller.
Barbara Band, chair of the School Library Association (SLA) Central & East Berkshire branch and a former president of CILIP (the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals), said school librarians are "desperate" for books. "We recommend [stocking] 10 books per pupil up to Year 11 but very few schools have that sort of money, so they look elsewhere for books. Parents clear out their children’s bookshelves [and donate the titles] but then schools end up with all the popular authors, like Jacqueline Wilson and Charlie Higson, so not a very diverse range of books. They are all quite similar.
"If you want a diverse range of books, with more titles by authors who are not straight and white, then you need money. It’s hard for publishers to get lesser-known authors out there, then children don’t know about those writers, so they don’t go to bookshops to buy their books. It’s a catch-22 situation."
Laura Frude, library assistant at Bristol Grammar School, is a member of a librarians’ group in Bristol and has noticed a "sharp uptick" in schools asking for resources on Twitter. "The overall impression is that schools aren’t getting new books in and the stock they have is increasingly dated. There are a few issues with this. Students definitely judge a book by its cover and they don’t want jazzy 1980s/’90s, Point Horror-type covers. Also, older books tend to be less sensitive to LBTQ+ themes and largely have white protagonists."
Another area that is lacking is non-fiction, said Band. "These books are so important in getting children to read for pleasure, but if a school is reliant on donations the non-fiction titles are often out of date. No one is going to donate a brand new book about space, but how do children explore something they are interested in if they can’t read about it?"
Bretta Townend-Jowitt, headteacher at Kingham Primary School in West Oxfordshire, said she couldn’t even consider paying for library costs out of the overall school budget. "We are not in deficit currently, but with the increased costs we are facing we are likely to be in two or three years’ time. We are in a very old, crumbling building that needs new windows and repairs to the roof."
The school raises money for the library via PTA-organised events, which have included a summer prom and a fireworks display, and has applied for funds from The Foyle Foundation and W H Smith because it "desperately" needs to update its stock. "We have non-fiction, science and geography books that are well out of date and we need a new fiction selection to ensure we have role models that are not stereotypical," said Townend-Jowitt.
One charity offering its support is The Siobhan Dowd Trust, which offers grants of up to £2,000 for schools to spend in local bookshops. Kate Powling, director of the trust, said the scheme is invaluable at a time when some new schools are being built with no library.
"The situation is depressingly dire, almost at crisis," she said. "I’ve been in several new academies and free schools recently where there is minimal library provision. We get emails all the time from teachers and librarians with little or no budget for new books, who are resorting to buying books for pupils from charity shops, financed from the teachers’ own pockets."
The Siobhan Dowd Trust would like the government to ensure funding for new books and make libraries an Ofsted requirement. Powling said: "If the government made the library part of an inspection, school leaders would have to dedicate the necessary resources. There are some brilliant headteachers who are supporting and creating libraries despite the budget cuts in school funding in recent years, but we hear hundreds of stories of school libraries which are really suffering as cuts need to be made."
Damian Hind, the secretary of state for education, declined to be interviewed by The Bookseller. However, a Department for Education spokesperson said: "Reading is a key part of a child’s education and we want all children to have the opportunity to read widely. Indeed, earlier this year we announced a multimillion-pound fund to make sure pupils master the basics of reading at primary level, and our young readers now rank among the world’s best.
"School libraries play a role in encouraging our children to enjoy reading. Schools receive £40bn of funding a year and we believe they are best placed to decide how to use their funding to meet the needs of their pupils." The department said it is investing an additional £13bn in schools over the next few years, meaning core funding will rise from £41bn this year to £43.5bn by 2019–20.