Penguin Books UK

In 2018, Penguin Books and the National Literacy Trust co-founded the Libraries for Primaries campaign to address the chronic underfunding of primary school libraries and decline in rates of reading for pleasure among young people. We believe that every child deserves access to a primary school library, and that a culture of reading for pleasure can flourish where access to books is plentiful.

Key to this activity is training teachers, who are key reading role models, with the tools and resources to embed a culture of reading for pleasure in their school. We have been empowering schools and teachers – who understand their learners and unique contexts best – with the autonomy to implement supplementary reading development strategies (e.g., book choice, reading fluency, and book discussions) and create time for independent reading and structured reading activities that promote joy and engagement. This helps children and young people develop both the skill and the desire to read independently.

The campaign convenes the support of a network of public, private and third sector organisations to provide disadvantaged primary schools with the resources needed to create or enhance their library spaces, and to make the case to government for increased investment into primary school libraries.

The Lit in Colour campaign was created in 2020 by Penguin Books as a long-term social impact programme to support UK schools to make the teaching and learning of English Literature more inclusive of authors of colour. Together with principal partner, The Runnymede Trust, the UK’s leading race equality think-tank, the campaign published research in 2021 highlighting the barriers preventing schools from teaching more books by authors of colour from primary up to secondary. It found that only 0.7% of GCSE students in England read a book by an author of colour, and that teachers had little to no support or training in how to talk about race and racism in the classroom. The research established that the main barriers responsible for this underrepresentation are: time, money, subject knowledge and confidence.

In 2024, with exam board partner Pearson Edexcel, we published more research which proves that studying a book by a writer of colour at GCSE creates significant positive outcomes for all students – not just students of colour. These include greater engagement in class, increased empathy, students feeling books are more relevant to them, and that students achieved across the full range of marks answering on a new Lit in Colour text, including at the very highest levels. This research has established that 98.5% of GCSE students in England still don’t have access to study a book by an author of colour. That’s why Lit in Colour and partners are continuing to support schools in making the curriculum more reflective and representative of UK society.