Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to encourage the use of school libraries and reading for pleasure in primary and secondary schools.

It is for individual schools to decide whether to provide and maintain a library service for their pupils. Many head teachers recognise the important role school libraries play in improving literacy and encouraging pupils to read for pleasure and ensure that suitable library facilities are provided. The current national curriculum, introduced from 2014, places greater emphasis on pupils developing the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information, as they move through key stage 1 into key stage 2, having first mastered the essentials of phonic decoding. Pupils should read for themselves a wide range of stories, poems, plays and information books. From 2016 the end of key stage 2 reading assessment was changed to reflect this more rigorous curriculum.