BY law, every prisoner locked up in the UK must have access to a library.
But incredibly, there is no legal right for primary schools to have one.
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More than 1,700 schools for four to 11-year-olds do not have a permanent reading space — that’s one in every seven state primaries.
And in deprived areas, pupils in as many as one in four are missing out.
During her Labour conference speech this week, Chancellor Rachel Reeves pledged £10million to make sure every primary in England has a library.
Now, a charitable foundation has donated nearly £2million to one of Queen Camilla’s favourite good causes, to provide them for 300 primaries by 2028.
This will benefit 750,000 children.
The Foyle Foundation has given £12million since 2009, but now it has put forward an extra £1.8million for the National Literacy Trust — whose patron is the Queen — to continue the campaign.
So far, the trust’s Libraries For Primaries programme has transformed more than 1,500 reading spaces, trained over 3,000 teachers and support staff, and donated cash for nearly 650,000 books.
Willow Primary, on the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham, North London, received hundreds of brand new books.
It has 400 students, and shares the site with a pre-school children’s centre for 200 pupils, and Brook Special School with 130 special needs children.
Forty years ago, Broadwater Farm was the scene of horrific riots.
But today, even though it is still an area of deprivation, the school is a place of hope for local families.
Co-headteacher Dawn Ferdinand says: “If we forgot to lock the doors over the weekend, we would come back and nothing would be taken because people value what we do.
“We have never been broken into.
“Reading is your gateway to every other subject.
“If you can’t read, then you can’t really access maths or science.
“A library provides an opportunity for children to get some peace, away from the distractions of other children and this new screen world, which lots of children are living in now.
“Before, parents would try and have a few books at home. But now, everybody’s into screens.
“You find children don’t really have lots of books at home, so being surrounded with the richness of books is amazing.
‘GAME-CHANGING’
“I’m not taking anything away from screens because they are part of our world.
“But having the book to read from adds more to life than a screen.”
Willow school used some of the £800 it received to buy dual- language books.
Co-headteacher Sarah Harris says: “We have a very diverse culture here, with quite a large Turkish community.
“Dual-language books allow a child with a parent at home, who can’t read English but can read Turkish, to borrow that book and be able to read it with their child and enjoy it.”
Jonathan Douglas, chief executive of The National Literacy Trust, said: “Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s announcement is game-changing.
“And it will also super-charge our efforts and cement reading for pleasure as a national priority as we approach 2026, which is the National Year of Reading.”
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