Building a literate nation: the key role of public libraries.

From the UK experience, there must be a central role for public libraries in the planning and delivery of national strategies for literacy. If they argue their case for a fully integrated involvement in national policies they have a unique and highly influential contribution to make to other important social policy areas such as lifelong learning and community regeneration. However they need to be better funded, more assertive, and more skilled at integrating and marketing their contribution. Edited version of a paper given at the Western Australian Local Government Librarians Association conference March 2003

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From a British perspective, there must be a central role for public libraries in the planning and delivery of national strategies for literacy.

Over the last nine years I have become an active and enthusiastic advocate of the potential role for public libraries in the drive to deliver a sustained breakthrough in literacy standards and increased literacy participation in our most disadvantaged communities.

This view was reinforced in particular by the National Year of Reading, a campaign the National Literacy Trust ran for the Department for Education in partnership with national and local government, business and the media, in order to promote reading in support of national literacy goals.

The public library potential

I have also become convinced that provided the public library sector successfully argues its case for a fully integrated involvement in national policies, then libraries have a unique and potentially highly influential contribution to make to a number of other important social policy areas such as

* early years

* lifelong learning

* social inclusion and economic and community regeneration

In other words, in order to deliver the full potential of these important policy priorities, we must improve the coordination and integration of planning and delivery, and ensure that we fully realise the special contribution of librarians. We need libraries to play a central and influential role, and by an influential role is not meant, as a marginal soft end contributor.

However to do this public libraries must be both adequately funded and more skilled at marketing and integrating their particular contribution. Libraries and librarians need to be more assertive about their potentially powerful contribution. The sector is far too modest about its current and potential influence.

This presentation refers to

* the state of literacy in the UK and why literacy is uniquely important

* why systemic perspectives to policy planning and delivery are needed

* the role of libraries in promoting literacy, and in particular in communities of economic and social dislocation 

In doing so I shall share the questions I have been asking about the influence of UK libraries in the drive to create a fairer, more literate community, and highlight some of the excellent initiatives that UK libraries have developed to support reading promotion and educational goals.

Mine is an outsider's perspective, as a critical friend. I do so to suggest how we can build on the higher profile and increased political popularity of libraries, to ensure that for literacy and wider learning--and the other policy strands already mentioned--libraries can move from the edge to the centre of policy planning and delivery. To state the obvious, if we can secure such centrality it will eventually deliver more resources, more power and more influence.

The new strategic framework for the public library service.

To contextualise this paper, there has been a highly significant development in England. In early 2003 the UK government published, after a long period of consultation with the sector and its stakeholders, an important report Framework for the future: libraries, learning and information in the next decade.

It defines the modern mission of libraries as

* Evolution--building on libraries' traditional core skills in promoting reading, informal learning and self help

* Public value--focusing on areas where public intervention will deliver the largest benefits to society including support for adult literacy and preschool learning

* Distinctiveness--building on libraries' open, neutral and self help culture. Libraries should not, it is proposed, duplicate the efforts of other public and private sector providers but complement them through partnership working

* Local interpretation of national programs--developing national programs which will raise the profile of the public library service as a whole but which are sufficiently flexible to be adapted to local needs

At the heart of that modern mission would be

* the promotion of reading and informal learning

* access to digital skills and services, including egovernment

* measures to tackle social exclusion, build community identity, and develop citizenship

The role of the library and the promotion of reading must not be judged solely by the delivery of other social goods, for example literacy and social inclusion. Reading should, and must, be promoted for its own intrinsic benefits, but for the purposes of this paper my commitment to the importance of public libraries is primarily instrumental. It is from the vantage point of an educationalist.

Literacy in the UK

Put simply, the National Literacy Trust exists to make people's lives better through literacy. Its main focus is to improve literacy in those communities where the need is greatest. It is a 10 year old charity that works to build a literate nation in the UK through

* a national web based support network

* policy analysis and the promotion of new thinking

* practical initiatives that put theory into practice and practical experience into improved policies

Literacy we define by reading, writing and speaking. It is considered to be a unique competence as it is the foundation for most learning, is critical to full participation in a democratic society, is more closely related to self esteem than any other learning goal, and is increasing in complexity. Literacy can be the key that unlocks the worlds of books, the information superhighway, and the rewards of full participation in family and community life, among many other things.

The Trust seeks to work in partnership with a host of agencies inside and outside of formal education, to stop lives being blighted by poor literacy skills. Without a critically literate nation, our economy, and our democratic values, are weakened.

Standards and needs

Recent research from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reminds us that we have nothing to be proud of in the UK regarding national literacy standards.

There is a bigger problem of inadequate basic skills among adults than all industrialised countries other than Ireland, the US and Poland. For example, across Europe around 10% of the working age population falls into the low skills category. The comparable figure for Australia is 18%; in Sweden it is about 6%. In Britain, however, the figure is 23%. In other words, 7 million adults are so poor at reading and writing that they do not have the skills expected of an 11 year old and in all probability cannot cope with the increasing literacy demands of everyday life. However, despite the headlines and the harsh reality of blighted lives, in many UK communities, illiteracy is often treated as a 'quiet problem'.

As in Australia, among our schoolchildren as well as our adults, the problem is significantly worse amongst males. And in all countries, there is a powerful correlation between literacy skills and socioeconomic status. To complete the picture of the complexity that we need to address, the evidence shows that there is a strong relationship, as early as 22 months old, between socioeconomic status and a child's attainment measures. This news is exactly why public libraries, from birth onwards, must make a powerful and unique contribution to the solution of these deeply worrying issues.

Responses

The UK government has made a bold commitment to transforming the situation. Major initiatives include the National Literacy Strategy (currently focusing on primary and the early years of secondary school), the National Year of Reading in 1998-9 (now translated into the National Reading Campaign (which the National Literacy Trust runs), and the Skills for Life national adult basic skills strategy.

But with some 7 million adults with poor basic skills and a growing literacy gap, will these initiatives be enough? Despite the higher profile and the increased expenditure there is a danger of the UK still failing to make best use of resources and consequently not delivering the prize of a truly literate nation.

What is needed is a radical community wide national strategy for literacy that comprehensively integrates the following

* Early years policies

These can start with the UK national BookStart scheme which has libraries in partnership with the health sector at the heart of it, and which through similar initiatives, like Born to Read, is developing in Western Australia and other states of Australia.

The other components of a national strategy for literacy would include

* the school based national literacy strategy

* the adult basic skills strategy

* lifelong learning, and community and family initiatives

These and other policy areas need to be designed and then delivered in an integrated way, reflecting the contributions of the wider community beyond formal education providers, and with the public library sector playing a central role.

The heavy concentration of UK literacy problems in particular neighbourhoods creates the danger of reinforcing downward spirals of educational, economic and social decline. Of course the sensitive issue is to avoid creating the very problems we fear, by anticipating them and triggering self fulfilling, reinforcing patterns of decline. There is an absolute imperative in the UK, and worldwide, to challenge the insidious culture of low expectations and stereotyping of individuals.

Vision for a nation

I am delighted with the new priority being given to literacy in the UK, but we must have a connected longterm strategy--one that is community wide, multiprofessional and built upon the need to address infrastructural and cultural issues. To deliver and sustain the necessary changes, we must start with a motivating and guiding vision of what a nation with transformed literacy standards and participation could be like. A vision that inspires and makes explicit to all partners and potential partners that successful delivery will bring about

* higher educational achievement

* better job prospects for all

* a stronger economy and a work force better equipped for skills updating and lifelong learning

* less crime

* less social exclusion

* more community capital etc

A systemic approach

Obviously schools and parents are central to the delivery of educational goals but they must have support, in an integrated and planned way, from the rest of the community. We need to develop a systemic approach, one that looks at the whole complex of influences working for or against each individual's capacity to engage in formal and informal learning. We must, for example

* look at the full range of factors that create low literacy, low achievement, low participation, and low self esteem

* identify and start to dismantle those stubborn causal factors which act as restraining forces

* recognise in our planning that positive outcomes in one policy strand can have negative consequences in another. We need to ensure that we have the planning and management capacity to be aware of these possibly negative side effects that we may be creating for someone else. Do we always ensure, for instance, that we are not shifting the burden of a problem to other agencies?

To deliver a breakthrough on literacy standards we must have the capacity to take a holistic perspective to the needs of the learner. What are the systems issues, which work for or against an individual's literacy achievement?

They include

* the quality of school teaching and school effectiveness

* home literacy modelling and opportunities

* early language development

* preschool support

* peer group influences

* media influences

* housing conditions 

* poverty

* racism

* the expectation of satisfying employment

* workplace literacy and training

* the availability and take up of youth services, community education and cultural opportunities

* and, of course, the provision and use of high quality library services that can promote the love of reading through noncurricula approaches

Learner centred learning

The learner's ability to take full advantage of all formal and informal learning opportunities is a product of a mass of interrelated influences which need to be monitored and more strategically mediated, in order to stop so many children and adults falling through the net and repeating the cycle of disadvantage.

A key requirement is the planning capacity to look for these 'cross cutting' and time related issues, and to monitor all the systems factors that contribute to the causes of the problem, and its solution. Simply, but critically, we must be less professional/ provider dominated and more learner/reader oriented. Once again this plays to the main argument about the distinctive contribution of libraries and the need for recognition of the contribution by education service professionals.

This is difficult to implement because, among other things, we rarely build the capacity for properly joined up, enduser focused approaches. This is frequently because of inadequate national planning or lack of local government corporate leadership; and because of a sort of professional blindness to the merits and potential contributions of other sectors.

Unfortunately, more often than not, the library sector in the UK does appear to be the Cinderella service and therefore is not contributing as powerfully to the underlying systems issues as it should.

Public library power

I do understand why this is the case. Libraries have been less powerful than other more hard edged sectors in the fight for scarce public resources, but the past need not equal the future. I am cautiously optimistic that the developments of the last few years, and the new strategic framework referred to earlier, will create a reinforcing positive movement for a transformation of the political power and community influence of UK libraries.

From its work over the last 10 years, the National Literacy Trust has come to the view that we must bring the following frameworks to a wider perspective on literacy and learning, and that the special contribution of library services should be centre stage. We need first

* a systems view

* secondly, a commitment to improve both classroom practice and the integrated involvement of the wider community. Here we are working to persuade all manner of sectors that they have something influential to bring, and much to gain, by contributing to the literacy crusade

* next, a commitment to work in sharp edged ways--that is skills development, and accreditation, but also, and we believe this is as important, in what might be perceived as softer, less directly instrumental ways including reader development work. This approach, which was central to so much of the work of the National Year of Reading, is sometimes the only way to entice the reluctant, the timid, the alienated, and the demoralised into the edges of the learning and the reading worlds. This might be by so called first rung provision which can eventually lead to accreditation, or by cultural/recreational routes into reading and literacy activities

* and the last dimension, linked to the first point, is the need to look at every possible way to create motivation, build self esteem, and the disposition, or demand, to engage in some form of literacy activity. Skills acquisition is fundamental but the creation of the demand side via new attitudes, beliefs and opportunities is in some ways more important. Creating the motivation and demand is the precursor to successful skills development, although of course sometimes the best way to create that motivation is through the successful learning of new skills with the positive reinforcement that brings. But we must accept that often, in the most difficult of contexts, it has to be the other way around

This mixed approach to literacy development leads naturally to the specific role of public libraries.

Disadvantage, literacy and the role of public libraries

Libraries play a key role, alongside other agencies, in a number of leading literacy partnerships across the country, for example in Birmingham, Bolton, Derbyshire, Leeds and Newcastle.

The vision for the National Year of Reading was that local government, with public libraries at the forefront, was the key to success. We were not disappointed.

Public libraries made a highly influential contribution to the year as indeed they are continuing to do in the National Reading Campaign. For example, during and since the year, library staff

* were frequently local authority lead officers and were almost always on local authority NYR steering groups

* have expanded their outreach work

* entered into new partnerships, for example The Reading Agency's work with librarians and youth workers

* have created many new reader development initiatives

Among the many consequences of the active engagement of libraries there is now a far greater recognition by education staff of the role and potential influence of libraries and librarians in the education world. Many educationalists have enthusiastically articulated their new understanding of the potentially key role of libraries and the need to work more collaboratively to create new opportunities for reading and literacy in communities.

Transforming literacy achievements must involve skills acquisition but this alone will not do the trick and create the sustained changes needed among the most difficult to reach. In addition we must have a range of strategies including what might be termed organised cultural support.

In the last few years my vantage point has enabled me to see that energetic and brave activity in the library sector can make a unique contribution to the national educational agenda. I say 'brave' because I am sure that when library managers attempt to redirect funds to tackle social exclusion and difficult to reach communities they can meet well articulated opposition from established library users.

Social inclusion and learning

Definitions of social inclusion and exclusion are frequently inconsistent. It is obviously a complex issue that includes aspects of deprivation, racism, poverty and disadvantage. It is also to some extent a subjective issue linked to individual or group perceptions. This takes me back to the systems approach and the need to look at ways to remove barriers to inclusion.

Public libraries, more than most other institutions, embody the values necessary for a more inclusive society and the delivery of key aspects of a national strategy for literacy which tackles issues at the causal and intergenerational levels.

Libraries are to one degree or another

* accessible

* neutral and unthreatening

* anonymous

* equal

* caring and supportive

* nonjudgemental

* noncompetitive

* nonaccrediting

* gateways to knowledge and empowerment 

* built around trust and community involvement, for what else is the act of borrowing and returning books?

They are also reader centred and fun places.

However from the perspective of literacy and learning an analogy with the formal curriculum is needed. The offered curriculum is not the same as the received curriculum. In other words, just because we supply or offer something to our students or clients, it does not of course mean that they receive it or perceive it in anything like the way we intended.

Questions for librarians

In the previously described context of restricted accessibility, unintended perceptions and therefore socially restricted use, here are some questions I have posed to librarians in recent years

* Are all the inherent strengths of the library for creating motivation, self esteem and greater equality of opportunity, fully realised? And if not, what more needs to be done?

* Do public libraries punch their weight for our most disadvantaged in the literacy/reading promotion drive?

* How is what you offer perceived, and then used by your most hard to engage communities? Do you indeed know?

* Can you widen your sphere of influence to impact more on those currently excluded from your provision? For example are libraries really accessible to those adults with poor basic skills? In the UK this is 23% of the population, yet 0.33% of libraries' adult book budgets are spent on books suitable for adults with basic skills limitations (0.5% if language tapes are included)

* Do you, to some extent, operate too much within your comfort zone?

* Can your library play a central role as a learning centre for its neighbourhood by attracting people back to learning through first rung courses and the potentially motivating provision of ICT? It is stressed here that the National Literacy Trust's mission is to create a truly literate nation, and that central to this is a recognition that both books and technology must play a part in an integrated/holistic approach. Public libraries are the most obvious location in most, if not all communities, for extended public access to ICT for lifelong learning

* Do you contribute to cross sector partnerships to promote literacy and reading? A recent experience with a lifelong learning partnership was disappointing. Despite the ambition of the partnership to sell learning to the large number of young people and adults who were alienated from education, there seemed to be little recognition of the importance of informal learning in a partnership which appeared to be dominated by the perspective of the formal education providers. The contribution of public libraries was conspicuously limited. They were part of the partnership but seemed to accept a modest, rather self effacing role

* Are you happy to sink some professional autonomy and to learn from working in partnership with other professionals? For example with youth workers, adult literacy tutors, early years workers, schoolteachers and community development workers?

* How are communities involved with your work? Is there consultation or, even better, participation? For example is it possible to involve young people in stock selection?

* Are you prepared, in order to get a larger share of local and national resources, to be more confident and assertive about the importance of your contribution to a range of social inclusion linked policy areas?

* Are you effectively sharing good practice on literacy and reader development activity?

Eliminating literacy underachievement, low participation, and social exclusion, requires an integrated approach to tackling the personal, social and structural causes. Libraries are uniquely well placed to contribute to this approach.

Unfortunately many of the 23 per cent of the UK adult population with poor literacy, associate schools and many other educational institutions with failure, humiliation and intimidation. They normally do not attach such a stigma to the public library. They may have other negative associations which need breaking down, but which are much easier to dismantle.

To have any chance of delivering a goal of a nation where all have modem critical literacy skills, we must first create the national will. There has never been a better time for this. In the UK, we must now build upon the momentum created by, among other things, the National Year of Reading, and recently new government funding and the work of imaginative small voluntary and private sector agencies like The Reading Agency and Opening the Book. All of these have led to scores of locally developed and imaginative reader development initiatives.

The role of local government

We have 149 library authorities operating more than 3,000 libraries in England. Many are very imaginative, others are not.

The situation according to all national surveys is patchy. For example The Audit Commission, an independent national agency which assesses the value for money and impact of local government services, published last year Building better library services in which it point to a decline in library visits and book loans, the tendency among libraries to focus on current users rather than nonusers, and patterns of opening hours inconsistent with the needs of would be users.

On the other hand many library authorities are developing strong links with the education sector and are building important informal and complementary learning services. There is more that can be done. Examples are

* by developing, in liaison with education authorities, programs of reader development to enrich and enhance the school curriculum

* creating a national network of homework clubs

* using the national Summer Reading Challenge, developed by The Reading Agency, to help children to continue to read and learn during the summer vacation 

The creation of self sustaining reading communities requires perseverance, imagination and radical action. The sustained breakthrough will not be achieved by repeating what has created the present.

Consistent with these imperatives are many of the quite radical initiatives that have been funded through the government reader development program from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Wolfson Public Libraries Challenge Fund.

Examples are

Northumberland 'First Steps'

This initiative has promoted and fostered early literacy, and increased the impact of the BookStart project by exploring ways of supporting parents/carers after the initial book gifting, and by promoting the concept of the Learning Family. This is done through development workers appointed to work in two districts with high levels of social and economic disadvantage. There have been partnership links with health centres, community houses and family centres, with the aim of improving school entry literacy and take up of library services.

Oldham

Oldham created a project in three of the highest areas of deprivation, to work with young parents of preschool children to develop their enthusiasm for reading, and their understanding of the services provided by the library. The project also developed library staff understanding and skills in working with young parents and their children.

North/Northeast London consortium 

In this 10 authority partnership targeted at low performing schools, and communities at risk of social exclusion, it focused on school aged children and included initiatives to help parents support their children's interests and skills in reading. So, for example, through project workers and in close liaison with teachers there have been library based workshops for parents and their children.

Leeds 'Way Ahead'

This reader development program focused on 16-19 year old nonlibrary users living in inner city areas characterised by high crime rates, unemployment and poverty. The project worked with the young people to develop specialist reader centred collections of books and materials within the central library's youth provision known as The Space.

The Vital Link

The Vital Link has brought together a strong partnership of library and literacy organisations at national, regional and local level to use innovative reader development work in libraries to inspire, support and motivate emergent adult readers. It has linked nine library authorities in four different regions with basic skills providers so that together they could test new ways of reaching out to adult learners, as well as embedding good practice where it already existed. In particular it sought to identify, evaluate and articulate the unique contribution library reader development work can make to the government's plans to improve the basic skills of adults.

All nine library authorities established contact with their local basic skills providers and found ways of using reader development to work with existing and new learners in settings ranging from colleges and libraries, to a prison and a youth offending team.

Training was a key to the project, not only in raising staff awareness of the national context, but in developing understanding of their respective roles. Library staff received literacy awareness training, and basic skills tutors received training in reader development.

The project workers used reader development techniques to draw out opinions from learners about a range of mainstream fiction and nonfiction titles. Their views were used to develop a special book collection for less confident readers called First Choice.

Libraries and the early years

The UK national Sure Start initiative aims by 2004 to give one third of all children in poverty, integrated family, health and care services. It has set library membership as one of the national targets for preschool children and their families. This is in part because of the findings of a major longitudinal study in England which has looked at preschool education and care provision, and has identified library membership and use, as one of the key birth to 3 years factors in effective home educational environments. The others are

* the frequency with which the child plays with letters/numbers at home

* parents drawing children's attention to sounds and letters

* parents teaching their child songs or nursery rhymes 

* the frequency with which parents read to their child.

These activities are more powerful than parental education or income

Many library authorities are working in partnership with Sure Start areas to provide, at about 18 months, a BookStart plus opportunity for many children. From a literacy and learning perspective, I am delighted with the many early years librarians appointments in England. One hundred and thirty new positions were created in the last two years, and a networking infrastructure through the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals has been established. Through these staff some library services are now influential contributors to local early years development and childcare partnerships, the bodies which plan local care and education to meet the needs of children in every area in England. The Trust is passionately committed to early language and early literacy development, and we have also become passionate about the value of high quality library work.

As little as six years ago, when I knew less about the quality of the work of libraries across the country, I would not, if considering an invitation by a major corporate to propose to them a new literacy initiative for their support, have suggested a library project as the best way forward. But libraries are moving forward very fast with new resolve and imagination. They are now, for me, an absolutely key resource in the drive to raise literacy standards. This is why we did, in fact, establish a partnership between the Trust and the Starbucks Coffee Company, to create All Books for Children where we work with Starbucks staff and 16 library authorities in an initiative to encourage early years library use in areas of social disadvantage.

The involvement of a very dynamic company like Starbucks is a symbol for the way ahead, representing as it does the importance of the role of public libraries in our literacy crusade, and the potential of carefully crafted and delivered partnerships with corporate supporters.

As another example, The Reading Agency has established an imaginative library initiative called Chatterbooks. This is a national network of reading groups for 4 to 12 year olds, sponsored by Orange in partnership with the public library network. Chatterbooks aims to inspire young people to read more adventurously and develop confidence in talking about, and choosing books.

We all are constrained by inadequate funding from public sector sources but we can increasingly find ways to partner with corporates to establish new initiatives that may, once the pilot has proved itself, be integrated into mainstream funding programs. The will, the imagination, and the potential for mutual benefit can be found.

The Framework for the future

The UK government's new Framework for the future of the library service suggests a 10 year vision. Some of the aspirations in it are most relevant to my theme.

The framework calls for the delivery of a vision in which

* anyone seeking a book can be guaranteed to get access to it through the library whether or not it is still in print

* all babies and new parents are invited to become library members within the first year of the baby's life as well as being exposed to the opportunities of early years reading

* all school age children can join a homework club, engage in summer activities or join reading groups

* all families in Sure Start areas are given intensive help in promoting reading

* any adult struggling with basic skills can turn to a library for personalised intensive help

* and anyone seeking opportunities for learning and training can be guided to a course through a library

Alongside these, libraries will still be places where anyone can learn, discover, reflect or imagine--without being questioned, asked to show a membership card, or required to make an appointment.

Libraries change lives

We need dynamic public libraries as central partners in the battle against poor literacy and blighted lives. They have much expertise and commitment that the education sector must learn to utilise more effectively.

To reinforce this point, I refer to the recent OECD report Reading for change (1) with its powerful research based recommendations about the crucial importance of promoting a culture of reading for pleasure and therefore also the need for the provision and marketing opportunities that will appeal to communities of nonreaders.

From just two quotes drawn from this international assessment of reading competence of 15 year olds, you will see immediately educational research confirming what public librarians all know and aim to deliver on a daily basis That reading can change lives.

   ... finding ways to engage students in reading
   may be one of the most effective ways to
   leverage social change.

   Being more enthusiastic about reading and a
   frequent reader was more of an advantage on its
   own, than having well educated parents in good
   jobs.

It is my hope that we can initiate an international dialogue that over the years will enable our library systems to benefit from an exchange of good practices that contribute to our shared goal--to use the power of libraries to change lives.

Reference

(1) Reading for change: performance and engagement across countries OECD, Paris 2002

Neil McClelland OBE was a teacher before moving into educational administration. He has worked as the deputy director of schools for the Inner London Education Authority, the director of education for the London Borough of Greenwich and is currently the director of the National Literacy Trust (UK). In 1988 Neil was a member of the UK delegation to the United States that reported on issues of inner city education. He was a co editor and contributor to Teaching and learning in cities (Whitbread 1993) and Building a literate nation (Trentham Books 1997). Neil has served on various advisory groups to the UK government, including the stakeholders' group for the review of the strategic framework of the public library service. In 2002 he was awarded an OBE for services to education. [e-mail]