Does your infant school have a library? Does it matter?

[katepol]

Our Ofsted-rated 'Outstanding' school doesn't have a library - it doesn't have the space. Instead, there are boxes of books in each classroom for the children to borrow books from (whenever and for as long as they want).

This is all very well, but it means that no one is taking responsibility for the books, buying new ones, checking they are complete, or that there are enough of the right levels.

Would this bother you? I suppose I am just a bit surprised that the school have such a relaxed approach to this. In dds class, she has read the very few (and very old) chapter books they have, and only gets to choose picture-type books, when she loves reading proper stories. Obviously we do go to the library, but it seems a bit of a shame she doesn't have access to decent reading material at her school. From what I have heard, most other schools seem to have better facilities - is this true?

i was going to say that it probably is ok if they have good age-appropriate books in their room - our school has a regular delivery from the local library - does that happen at yours?

however the kids get to choose a book to take home three times a week along with their reading books.

surely they should be encouraged to choose at least one book a week to take home? id ask the teacher how they do this

Ds1's school has a library but children aren't allowed to borrow the books. The mobile library stops nearby though, so children can still borrow books without having to go to the public library.

Is it a question of space though? My school only had 3 classrooms so definitely no room for a library

We got books by:

1. Offering a bookplate for each donated book- so children (especially children who were leaving could give a goodbye present)- they liked signing them etc.
2. Sending out a wishlist of classics to parents.
3. Ransacking charity shops for good clean copies.
4. Welcoming donated books- vetting them afterwards!
5. PTA funding

We thought of asking public libraries for suplus stock but didn't need to. We also used story tapes and cds- very popular.

Very much parent-run though. School staff valued it but didn't do any administering.

School does have a library, but this is mainly used as a meeting room because there is nowhere else. The library resources are mainly for the teachers to borrow from for use in their classrooms. Classrooms have appropriate books which seem to cater well for large ability range. If classrooms are well stocked I do not think lack of library is a problem.

They raise money for books by running the Scholastic book fair and taking the commission in books rather than cash - better value.

Our previous school (German) didn't till one of the mums organised it. Still the teachers didn't promote/use it with the classes at all. In all I found it weak on the school's part. I used to take dd to our local library 2 or 3 times a week and she read more or less everything in her range there (small library).

New school (bilingual) is better in than respect. They have a nice library for German and English and two librarians. It does make quite a difference. The class go to the library with their teacher once a week. The librarian gets out a selection of books for their level, she has a pretty good idea of which kids are more advanced and caters to them too. So they take one library book home a week. Every night they get 1-3 of those ORT books to read, depending how much they tend to want to read. We can borrow books and CDs from the school library ourselves Wednesdays and Fridays. I use it a lot.

Having experienced first the one school then the other, sure you can go to local libraries but I do find it very nice for the dc and their families to have a good working school library.

For me to it was convenient to have such a huge range of English books to choose from (thin on the ground in children's libraries here). So I don't now have to keep buying them every week.

I think it's a good thing to get one set up (possibly with donations of old books and maybe a small contribution from each family first) and perhaps a few dps would be prepared to spend a couple of hours a week working there.

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