School don't send home books any more

This is so sad.

And yes - Songbirds much better. With Little Wandle we keep getting the same books repeated as they're so expensive the school couldn't afford enough sets to have a genuine range of reading material.

The reasons will be all those outlined above: cost-saving, the joys of 'fidelity to the scheme' and books being lost/ruined at home.

Our school's chosen scheme is Little Wandle too, but thankfully we still have real books sent home (and DD js now in Year 2 and pretty much done with it now anyway). If they reverted to digital I'd refuse to read the online books and just top up with library and home books instead. I do feel sorry for families without the resources to do this though - there's so much evidence now that reading on a screen is inferior to reading physical books in terms of information processing and long-term recall.

Completely agree with the comments re Songbirds and Usborne.

Then have a 3 strikes and you're out rule. 3 strikes and your child gets no more books and doesn't learn to read

I bet this is Michael Gove's fault some how

I knew it would be Little Wandle! The problem if you send home a set of books to a group and someone doesn't bring a copy back, then you don't have enough for each child in the next group. I can understand where the school is coming from.

They had parents who cared about school property and would bring books back. I’d say about 20% of the books that get given out either don’t come back or when they do they are in such a state as to be unusable.

They're complaining about their kids carrying books??

I accept it's expensive but actually the books are really varied and are well made - they've obviously put a lot of effort into catering for different interests, the illustrations are great, mix of fact and fiction. They are certainly no worse in terms of story than other reading scheme books - they're always a bit limited in the early stages. The children are all learning really well too - every child in the class can read all the sounds which is a big surprise to me having attended schools where a good proportion still couldn't really read by secondary.

The list is relatively long but if you didn't use a scheme on it before, it costs a lot to overhaul.

Probably cheaper to have e-scheme of books and parents can’t lose them

I do understand that, I’m an ex teacher myself. The government approved list is also quite expansive.
What is the schools scheme op?

Ours do supply tablets on loan to families who aren't able to access them so it might be worth asking if you need some help as you won't be the only ones struggling.

Time spent reading with children & what they are reading is more important than whether it's on paper or tablet. It's a sensible decision for a lot of schools as can access more books at lower cost

Libraries & charity shops are good sources of children's 'real' books if you want them.

It is not the school's fault. Blame ofsted. They insist that schools follow a government accredited phonics scheme and that includes children only reading books from the scheme where the child knows each sound making the whole process incredibly expensive as well as laborious, unnecessarily complicated and boring to the pupils.

I was going to suggest this!

Because schools had to change to a government-approved phonics scheme. Keeping your old scheme and its accompanying books wasn't an option if it wasn't on the list.

2 years ago my daughters school didn't send home physical books and parents were not happy, they understandably preferred a book to a screen.

Last year parents were offered the option of physical books, but had to sign a contract to say if lost or damaged the books would pay the cost (£4.75). Only 3 books in total were lost or badly damaged, if people need to pay for them they take much better care of them

I’m shocked by this. DD is in year 1 and brings home a new phonics book every other day. Some are better than others but from now on I’ll appreciate them being made from actual paper!

I suspect the school is sick of pupils not bringing back expensive books. I spent so much time chasing parents and children for books when I was a TA. It's really pissing off to see almost brand new books disappear because parents and children don't value them.

I agree it's stupid. Ours still send real books but a lot do get lost which is hard to understand - I guess people don't value the books or they would take more care of them.

I wouldn't bother with the reading if it was on a screen. They read the phonics books 3x in school anyway before they send them home. You can get bundles of phonics books second hand fairly cheap. Our library has a lot too.

We had this for one term before the school bought the books. It was a nightmare. When you're trying to help the kids by pointing out a split digraph or something you can't touch the page because on a tablet touching the page turns the page. We thankfully have lots of books at home (all from teaching child1 to read during covid), we used those and didn't sign the reading diary until we got a real book.

It's sad to hear other libraries don't have a good selection - I assumed the good variety we have in ours was standard.

They were next to children's but in a separate area if that makes sense?

Another thing you could try is ordering the books for the reading scheme from the library , but I guess you'd need to find out from the school exactly what they are in advance, and I don't know what the odds are that the library would be to get them.