We should extend to the children of armed forces personnel a scheme which helps under-fives build their own collection of books, writes John Healey
Armed forces personnel and their families make sacrifices for the rest of us: I want the government to make a modest extra effort to reward them by backing the extension of a special books scheme we are running in Rotherham.
The Imagination Library was set up four years ago and delivers a book every month direct to the homes of 13,600 under-fives in the town. It was launched with the backing of Dolly Parton’s charitable foundation and now nine out of 10 Rotherham youngsters are signed up.
Evidence shows that early reading – at home, not just in school – is important to giving a child a good start in life. But consider this stark fact: one in three young people do not have books of their own. Teachers in Rotherham report that there are children who, without the books they receive from the Imagination Library, would have no books at home at all.
Instead, those signed up to the scheme at birth will have received their own library of 60 books by the age of five.
Rotherham has seen a year-on-year improvement in children achieving a good level of development at early years foundation stage, with 50 per cent
in 2009 and 58 per cent in 2011.
Within that improvement, children enrolled in the Imagination Library have outperformed those not enrolled by more than 6.5 per cent.
Above all, our Rotherham scheme shows the power of a parcel arriving with a child’s name on it and their own book inside. It sparks a kid’s imagination from the very earliest age, giving every young child a better start in life and a better chance to read. Teachers, parents and – most importantly of all – children love the scheme. It fires a desire in the child to read, but it often fires a determination to do so in the family as well.
This is a different, personalised way to deliver an essential public service for all. And economies of scale make it good value for money: the cost of the book and postage is £2 per child per month, or £24 for each child each year and a total of £120 over the full five years. Compare that to the average £4,139 spent on each child in the country each year during primary school.
There are about 120,000 children whose parents are in our armed forces, and most live in the UK. If the proportion under five is similar to that in the general population, about one in four, this comes to 30,000, so extending the benefit of the scheme to every child under five with a parent serving in the forces would cost about £750,000 a year.
I am also pressing education and defence ministers to extend it now to three special groups of children who start life facing some of the biggest hurdles and who could really benefit from this scheme: children who are in care, babies born to mothers who are in prison, and children whose parents are serving in our UK armed forces.
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John Healey is MP for Wentworth and Dearne
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well and good but I do not accept that those joining the army are doing it to make sacrifices for the rest of us
line ,sorry. There are training opportunities etc yes but essentially soldiers have a license to kill ,at the extreme of course. Everything is done one feels sure that young mens lives are not put on the line ,well stories of under supply etc aside. My father (born 1919) used to say sometimes that in Ireland in his experience one way out of poverty for many young poor men was to try and get into boxing ,another dangerous path ;here it can be the Army. One of dads younger brothers was drawn into the IRA and served 8years in prison ,when that family helped by my dad, came to Briton a middle son went into the army and did three tours of Ulster,going back once after recovering from being wounded which took nine months ,he wound up in the veterans home , brain damaged ,from alcohol. One can be sure there are many terrible stories from those used in conflict,yes addressing our interests ,no one made them go except of course the
people who might have provided some other kind of job. Those who choose this course without being socially
disadvantaged in the first place in their capacity to understand the undertaking I fully respect and obviously, sad to say, we do need them.
“I asked myself: what is the ultimate way to pit yourself against death ? And diamonds came into my mind ” Damien Hirst . (what a world eh !)
I asked MYSELF the same question obviously and diamonds came into my mind,but not such hard ones.
dunno why I typed Briton,meant England,nothing weird,just a typo.
In view of his / her attempts at English, perhaps d. meardle may have benefited from this scheme.
Has anyone asked why Ms. Parton is funding this scheme rather than British publishers,writers and educational trusts?
DS you cheeky monkey! if I choose to use a patois I have every right !