News
Michael Rosen calls for children to be given automatic library membership
21 May 2012
Schools minister Nick Gibb has invited leading authors to advise the government on ways to make books come alive after an international reading and literacy study showed that only 40% of British children read for pleasure.
Michael Rosen told the BBC Radio 4 Reading Between the Lines series that he blamed an over-emphasis on the teaching phonics of in schools. Rosen said that although the government's favoured system of synthetic phonics was a good way of breaking down single words, it did not necessarily promote reading:
We've got in place a system in which children can decode words but there's no indication they can read for meaning. If you can read for meaning .... you will want to go on reading because you find it useful.
But Gibb claimed some children would slip through the net and not learn to read unless synthetic phonics was taught first and fast during the early years of primary school. However, he also told the programme he was concerned that so many children can read but won't read.
In particular, Gibb said his policy staff were investigating Rosen's idea of giving every five-year-old a local library card:
One of his ideas is for every child. when they start school, they will be issued with a library ticket from the local library and a map of how to get there and then school visits as well.
Read the full story at BBC News
