Nine books have sold more than 100 million copies. Fifth in the list, behind Don Quixote, A Tale of Two Cities, The Lord of the Rings and The Little Prince, is Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
What makes author JK Rowling’s achievement so remarkable is that her 107 million sales for the book were notched up in just 20 years (subsequent books in the series have added a further 350 million or so).
Harry Potter fans are obsessive and numerous. They include famous names such as Barack Obama, Prince William, Stephen King and one that tickles me the most: cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham.
“It’s wonderful writing and a wonderful narrative,” the reading expert and professor of psychology from the University of Virginia says.
There’s no doubting the readership figures, but did the Hogwarts phenomenon actually boost literacy levels in children, as many fans would have us believe?
Willingham doesn’t think so, saying the “Harry Potter effect” was merely the “secret hope of parents and teachers trying to find the perfect book for a child”.
It wasn’t wizardry
But England certainly saw improvements in literacy rates from the time of the first book’s publication in 1997. However, it wasn’t a spell that caused them to rise: more pragmatically, it was due to an unremitting strategic focus combined with sheer hard work by teachers.
The launch of the national literacy strategy by the incoming New Labour government coincided with the book’s publication and this was rolled out to all primaries in September 1998.
It was said at the time to be the biggest school-improvement programme in the world, involving 150 local authorities, 18,500 schools and some 200,000 teachers working with 3 million children. “There was nothing like it on the planet,” according to Sir Michael Barber, its architect.
It was also relentless, prescriptive - and, for many, hard to forget. When in May Tes columnist Michael Tidd asked in a poll, “Primary colleagues - does 15-15-20-10 mean anything to you?”, the answers were fascinating. Half had no idea what it meant, but for a third it still “sent chills down my spine”.
These figures sat at the heart of the strategy - the infamous “Literacy Hour”: a 15-minute whole-class session, 15 minutes of word-level or sentence-level work (phonics, grammar), followed by 20 minutes’ independent/group work and a 10-minute plenary.
While the routine was restrictive for teachers, what did seem like magic was New Labour’s ability to pull it out from its sleeve, as soon as it swept into power in 1997 with its “education, education, education” mantra.
David Blunkett, as shadow secretary of state for education, had set up the literacy task force in 1996 and was ready to roll. In it came, and with it an ambitious national target that 80 per cent of 11-year-olds would meet the expected standard in English by 2002. Although the target was not met (75 per cent was achieved), the strategy was considered a success.
So no wizardry; in fact, less of a spell and more of a drill.
However, let’s not brush over Harry’s contribution. Willingham is probably right that Rowling’s invention doesn’t directly stretch vocabularies or minds, but we should be grateful for anything that helps children build a love of reading and books. Ten points to Gryffindor.
@AnnMroz
