Marc Lambert, Chief Executive, Scottish Book Trust and member of Literature Alliance Scotland

1. School Libraries & the
Education, Policy &
Social Context in
Scotland
marc.lambert@scottishbooktrust.com

2. Reading is key to children’s empowerment,
achievement and success.

3. scottishbooktrust.com
Policy Context (1)
• Target the earliest years of a child’s life, to build strong foundations and reduce the
number of adverse childhood experiences that we know have lasting impacts on
our children and shape their lives as adults
• Our mission is to improve the life experience and life chances of our children and
young people, so they can thrive and be equipped to take advantage of tomorrow’s
opportunities. Our driving principle is simple: if we invest in our young people now,
everyone will benefit.
• We are determined to close the attainment gap and raise standards for all in our
schools.
• We believe that teachers, children and their parents are best placed to make
decisions about a young person’s learning – we must do more to support them.
AND SCHOOL LIBRARIANS!
• We will put more power and money in the hands of headteachers to raise
attainment

4. scottishbooktrust.com
Policy Context (2):
• Brexit
• Independence
• Struggling Economy
• Local Authority Service Cuts
• Scottish Government budget
• Erosion of Public & Civic Culture

5. Educational Context
‘Annually, nearly 18% of Scotland’s school pupils leave
without having mastered literacy skills’
Overall, children from deprived backgrounds perform 50%
less well in terms of educational qualifications than their
more fortunate peers. (Scottish Survey of Literacy and
Numeracy, 2015).
In Scotland today, 35% of the adult population have lower
literacy skills than that of an eleven-year-old.
Source: (Literacy Working Group Report, 2008)
scottishbooktrust.com

6. Social Context: Illiteracy
“If people have low levels of literacy,
they are more likely to suffer poor
health; they are more likely to be
living in poverty and deprivation; and
they are more likely to be out of work
or in unstable and low-paid
employment.” (Sir Harry Burns)
scottishbooktrust.com

7. Consequences of Poor Literacy
• People with lower literacy skills earn, on average 16% less than
people with functional literacy skills
• 48% of offenders in custody have a reading age at or below the
expected level of an 11-year-old.
Source: NLT, Literacy Changes Lives (2014)
• 25% of people earning less than £10,000 is not functionally
literate – compared with less than 4% of those earning over
£30,000
Source: Read On, Get On Scotland (2013)
• People who live in the 15% most deprived areas in Scotland tend
to have lower literacy scores than those who live in the rest of
Scotland
Source: Scottish Survey of Adult Literacy, Summary of Finding (2009)

8. Cost of Poverty in UK
• Total public service cost of poverty in the UK
of around £78 billion
• £1 in every £5 spent is to mitigate the damage
caused by poverty
Source: Counting the cost of UK Poverty, Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2016)

9. scottishbooktrust.com
• Productivity
• Innovation
• Efficiency
• Knowledge
• Skills
• Understanding
= A highly literate &
informed population
Scotland Needs….

10. scottishbooktrust.com
Public & Schools Libraries Strategy

11. scottishbooktrust.com
• 2013 Robert Gordon
University Study into
impact on learning
• Identify, evaluate and
summarise evidence
• Assess the applicability of
the findings in relation
to Curriculum for
Excellence
• Identify gaps in the
evidence and suggest
areas for further research
• Findings:
• Higher test or exam scores equating to
academic attainment
• Successful curriculum or learning
outcomes
• Positive attitudes towards learning
• It also identified key elements within
school libraries which contributed to
these positive outcomes. This included:
• The presence of a qualified, full-time
librarian
• Support staff who could undertake
routine tasks
• A library which supported both
physical and virtual access
School Libraries in Scotland

12. Strategic Aims for Public Libraries in
Scotland

13. scottishbooktrust.com

14. scottishbooktrust.com
Challenge Ahead: The Digital World

15. scottishbooktrust.com
• 7.6bn people on earth with 5.5bn
over 14yrs old
• 5bn mobile phones
• 3bn smartphones - 700m iPhones,
1.8bn androids; 500m Chinese
Androids
• “Mobile is not a subset of the
internet anymore. Mobile
becomes the internet – the main
way people go online.”
- Benedict Evans
Digital Trends

16. scottishbooktrust.com
All of the major tech
players, companies
from other industries,
and start-ups with
names we don’t know
yet are working away
on some or all of the
new major building
blocks of the future.
They are:
• Artificial intelligence /
machine learning
• Augmented reality
• Virtual reality
• Robotics and drones
smart homes
• Self-driving cars
• Digital health/wearables
Digital Futures

17. scottishbooktrust.com
• The computer may entirely
disappear. AI will be activated by a
voice command, a person entering
the room, a change in blood
chemistry, a shift in temperature, a
motion. Maybe even just a
thought.
• Facebook’s famed researcher
Regina Dugan has announced that
her secretive team is working
on using the brain to type, and to
control augmented reality devices.
They are also developing ways to
“hear” through your skin.
• Google has changed its entire
corporate mission to be “AI first”
AMBIENT COMPUTING/AI

18. scottishbooktrust.com
“Parents felt that their
definition of an illiterate
person no longer
corresponded to the
traditional view of
someone who cannot read
and write, but rather was
considered as a person who
cannot learn, unlearn,
relearn and use digital
technologies as part of
their everyday lives.”
Palaiologou, Ioanna (2014)
Redefining Literacy

19. Deep Reading – ‘immersion’

21. Thank you
scottishbooktrust.com
/scottishbktrust @scottishbktrust