World Book Day 1 March 2012

As well as being St David's day, today is World Book Day.


Designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and marked in over 100 countries all over the world, this is the 15th year there’s been a World Book Day.


Children of all ages will be coming together to appreciate reading. Very loudly and very happily. 


The main aim of World Book Day in the UK and Ireland is to encourage children to explore the pleasures of books and reading by providing them with the opportunity to have a book of their own. This fits in very well with the Dundee Born and Read campaign led by the Dundee Evening Telegraph.



Nobody really knows exactly how we learn to read, but everybody agrees that reading is a very important skill. Parents and carers can do so much to help children become readers. Read Together is a website with lots of ideas to help promote the sharing of reading between adults and children.

Support Dundee Born and Read

The Evening Telegraph is running a great campaign,

Dundee Born and Read

They are trying to collect over 5000 books for school children in Dundee.

Too many children in our city are growing up in homes with few if any books. This is important. We know that children who grow up in households where books are plentiful go further in school than those children growing up without books. Developing good reading habits at home, which starts with being read to, helps children get ready for school and not start school at a disadvantage. Having books at home helps enhance literacy and learning.

I want to not only congratulate D C Thomson on this public spirited initiative but to also to urge Ferry folk to generously support it.

Donations of new or second hand books suitable for youngsters aged 3 to 12 are wanted. Please deposit these in the drop off boxes at our Branch Library in Queen Street. Schools in the city will then distribute the books.

Jenny Marra MSP is also supporting the campaign and drawing attention to it in the Scottish Parliament. 

Albanian Children More Likely to Enjoy Reading than Pupils in UK

The UK was ranked 47th out of 65 nations in a table based on the number of teenagers who pick up a book, newspaper or magazine on a daily basis.

In all, around four-in-10 teenagers in the UK fail to read for enjoyment outside school. Across the developed world, boys are significantly less likely to read daily than girls.

This is significant because better readers not only perform well in school, they grow up to become adults who use their reading skills to make sense of the world around them and continue learning throughout their lives.

These disclosures are revealed in a recent research report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This study pulls together data from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) – a series of tests taken by students across the world in 2009. It ranked 65 nations by the proportion of pupils who reported reading for pleasure.

PISA finds that a crucial difference between students who perform well in the PISA reading assessment and those who perform poorly lies in whether they read daily for enjoyment, rather than in how much time they spend reading. 

Significantly, on average, students who read daily for enjoyment score the equivalent of one and a half years of schooling better than those who do not.

The Reads and the Read-Nots - Implications for Dundee?

Yesterday the National Literacy Trust published a study about the reading habits of children and young people in the UK. 
Their research of 18,141 children revealed a polarised nation of young readers with 1 in 6 reporting that they don’t read a single book in a month, while 1 in 10 say they read more than 10 books in a month.

This divide between the “reads” and the “read-nots” is concerning because the research shows reading frequency has a direct link to attainment, as 8 in 10 children who read over 10 books a month are above average readers compared with just 3 in 10 of those who rarely read.
Fresh approaches are urgently needed to encourage young people to read more. However, the number of children who never read a book suggest our schools and libraries have a challenge on their hands.

The research also found that:

• 77% of children who read for longer than an hour at a time are above average readers, while just 4% who read for over an hour are below the level expected of them.
• Only 30% of children who read for up to 10 minutes at a time are above average readers, with 20% below the reading expected level for their age.
• Text messages are the most popular thing for children to read outside of class with 60% saying they read texts outside of class.
• Children who read text messages but not fiction books are twice as likely to be below average readers compared to those who also read fiction (10% versus 5%). 

National Literacy Trust Director, Jonathan Douglas, said:
"Our new research shows that 1 in 6 children don't read a book in a month, and we are worried that they will grow up to be the 1 in 6 adults who struggle with literacy to the extent that they read to the level expected of an eleven-year-old, or below."

I have written to Michael Wood, Director of Education, to ask him to put this report on the agenda of the next meeting of the Council's Education Review Group. I think there are some important issues for us to examine in relation to promoting reading amongst children and young people in our city.