A new report from BookTrust and Waterstones Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce, launched at Edith Kerrison Nursery School and Children’s Centre in Newham, outlines five focus areas that the charity and laureate believe will turn the tide on ‘indefensible’ reading inequality.
It forms part of BookTrust’s and the children’s laureate’s Reading Rights campaign which aims to ensure every child can benefit from shared reading.
The five areas outlined in the Reading Rights report, which will be a priority for Cottrell-Boyce over the next year, are:
- Workforce training: Supporting all professionals and practitioners working with children and families in the early years to understand the benefits of early reading and to be confident sharing stories and showing parents and carers how to read with their children.
- Policy, guidance and frameworks: Making sure that early childhood reading shows up in policy, guidance and frameworks – wherever it can make a difference
- Access to books: Making sure that children and families, early years professionals and practitioners, and community spaces, childcare settings and schools – all have access to high-quality books and reading-support resources, including books that are representative of the contemporary UK.
- Sharing high-quality research and evidence: Sharing the evidence base about reading in the early years with everyone involved in supporting children and families during this phase, in ways that are clear and meaningful and will drive change.
- Multi-agency leadership: Demonstrating the impact that early shared reading could make when effective practice is implemented in a coordinated manner by a wide range of local leaders across a community, city or wider area.
The report, which reveals plans for a place-based City of Stories pilot to create a reading blueprint, builds on BookTrust’s Reading Rights summit that took place in Liverpool in January and saw experts come together to discuss innovative practice and support that will change children’s lives.
A second Reading Rights summit will be held early next year, followed by a second report in summer 2026, which will detail progress over the five key areas.
'If you've been read to as a child, by someone who cares about you, you have been given an enormous invisible privilege'.
The children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce said, ‘Britain is not an equal society. 4.3 million children are growing up in poverty. When I was named Waterstones Children’s Laureate, I knew I wanted to use my position to campaign for these children, the ones that are being left behind.
‘If you’ve been read to, as a child, by someone who cares about you, you have been given an enormous invisible privilege. If you haven’t been given that privilege, then you’ve been left with an enormous mountain to climb.”
‘During my travels as Waterstones Children’s Laureate I’ve encountered brilliant people and ideas who are already making a difference. We just need to make sure that every child gets a chance to experience that difference. To turn that invisible privilege into a universal right.
‘I’m asking for Government support on a local and national level to make sure this simple, vital experience is available to all. To help us remember who we really are – the storytelling species.’
