Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure that future generations of schoolchildren in addition to online content have adequate access to books and written material (a) in and (b) outside of the classroom.

We believe all children deserve to be taught a rich curriculum which encourages extensive reading of books and other kinds of texts, both physical and digital, in and out of school. The English programmes of study emphasise the importance of listening to, discussing and reading for themselves a wide range of books, poems, plays and information books. We will continue to encourage the development of a life-long love of literature for future generations.

The Department recently published initial findings on complete curriculum programmes for specific subjects in key stages, showing the benefits of high quality curriculum resources on the quality of education and reducing unnecessary teacher workload. The initial findings can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-curriculum-programme-pilot-early-findings. A final report will be published in due course.