Books for Schools update: Columbia Primary School, London

In November 2017, I accompanied the team from our charity partner, Give A Book, to Columbia Primary School in Tower Hamlets, one of the most densely populated and deprived areas of London. Our objective: to gift 100 new reading books + writing materials to the school breakfast club. 

Our Books for Schools programme donates one reading book to a British primary school for every order received. 1 in 4 British children lives in poverty, books can be very scarce at home, and it is not mandatory for UK primary schools to have a library. Thus, millions of children living in poverty do not have easy access to books. 

Helen and I believe very strongly that books are the most magical of gifts, with the power to elevate and transport the reader into new realms of potential. It is simply not acceptable for children on our doorstep to be locked in their cycle of poverty because they lack the resources to learn, escape, cope, or dream of a better world and a better future.

I arrived at the school to the delightfully chaotic sound of tens of children shrieking with delight as they unpacked the boxes. Busy in the way that kids love to be, they quickly organised themselves into groups of mini-librarians, stamping the books and sticking in book-plates. Every book that we donate has the first name and city of the customer who donated the book through his or her order. This way, the children know that people around the world care about their future.

Columbia Primary is fortunate to have a part-time librarian in Lucy Chambers, who splits her time across 4 local schools each week. She explained that Breakfast Book Clubs are an ingenious way of making books accessible, and non-threatening, to children who normally would not seek out books or visit the library. The books that we chose with Give A Book are those which encourage reading for pleasure (there was a lot of David Walliams!). Having them in plain view on a daily basis while the children, many of them from socially deprived families living in the estates around the school, are killing time over breakfast is a brilliant way to engage the children with reading. While I was there, one boy was getting very excited over a particular book. Lucy commented that she had never seen him gravitate towards books before!

Lucy says: “Learning Mentor Verna Grant, who runs Breakfast Book Club, tells me that reading at Breakfast Club is particularly popular with children from the many families who don’t own any books. They get the chance to start their school day with a nutritious breakfast and to read at the same time.” 

To find out more about Tower Hamlets Schools Library Services teacher resource loans, projects to develop reading and writing and their innovative scheme of supplying part-time librarians for primary schools in and around Tower Hamlets, please see   https://www.towerhamlets-sls.org.uk/ 

 To find out more about Columbia Primary School, please see  www.columbia.towerhamlets.sch.uk/

 To find out more about our partner Give A Book, and their wonderful work with schools and prisons, please see here. You can see their blog post on our partnership here.