Best Practice

'The first thing I invested in was the school library'

Literacy and numeracy School improvement Facilities Leadership/school profiles
The library must sit at the heart of our teaching and learning environments. Former headteacher, Richard Gerver – the new president of the School Library Association – explains why school libraries have never been more important and looks at some tenets of good practice


Back in 2019, the #GreatSchoolLibraries campaign, an initiative spearheaded by CILIP’s School Libraries Group and the School Library Association (SLA), released the findings of its survey of 1,750 schools across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The good news was that 87 per cent of schools have access to a designated library space. The implication of this, however, is that around one in eight schools (13 per cent) do not.

What these figures do not reveal is how effectively our school libraries quietly serve the wider school community, as the study also showed that many libraries are often used as classrooms or meeting rooms.

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