By Matthew Courtney (Director, Wandle Learning Partnership/Chesterton Primary School), Kate Sayer (Education and Evaluation Specialist, World Book Day) and Debbie Thomas (Lecturer in Reading for Pleasure, Open University)
Reading for Pleasure can transform children’s lives. At Chesterton Primary School in the Wandle Learning Partnership, we’ve seen first-hand that when children choose to read, they often do better academically and gain wider benefits – better wellbeing, richer vocabularies and broader general knowledge. That’s why we deliberately plan how to nurture Reading for Pleasure both inside school and beyond the gates – an ambition that sits at the heart of the National Year of Reading 2026 campaign.
World Book Day offers a valuable opportunity to support this work. For many of our children, it is a joyful and memorable day that celebrates stories, authors and reading communities. But, as the DfE’s Reading framework reminds us, we need to take a “strategic approach to reading for pleasure, rather than an eclectic mix of activities” (DfE, 2023, pg. 91). The challenge is ensuring that World Book Day fun strengthens our long-term reading culture, rather than being a one-off event that sits apart from everyday practice.
To explore this in practice, World Book Day, the Wandle English Hub and the Open University Reading for Pleasure team have worked together to create a short podcast series with experienced practitioners from primary schools. We were delighted to be one of the schools invited to explore how we can make the best strategic use of World Book Day, not just as a fun day in the school calendar, but to bring the life changing power of Reading for Pleasure to all our pupils.
As we listened to colleagues share how they approach World Book Day in their own settings, we found ourselves reflecting on what this might mean for our practice. Several key takeaways emerged that will shape our planning:
- Reflecting on previous celebrations is an important starting point. As Stacey Mitchell, Head of School at Marine Academy, Plymouth explained, planning often begins by thinking about “what our previous year’s plan has been… and reflecting on the previous year and how it works, and actually what didn’t work, and whether we want to try something new.”
- Set a clear purpose and rationale for the day. Alice Read, Assistant Headteacher from Buckingham Primary School, Richmond, described how this begins with “looking back on our reading for pleasure action plan, and thinking about what we actually want to achieve on that day, but also beyond.”
- Plan activities that can be revisited or built into future practice. Colleagues described usingWorld Book Day as an opportunity to trial new approaches, with the insights gained then informing future provision and everyday Reading for Pleasure practice
- Create informal, low-stakes opportunities for parents to join in alongside their children. Stacey described how her school’s ‘OU Booknic’ offered “an informal and relaxed way for families to come in and engage with their child without feeling judged”
- Use the day to help staff get to know your readers and their families better. These shared reading opportunities can help staff learn more about pupils’ reading lives beyond school. Stacey reflected that such events “help us to have those informal chats about their reading at home”
- Involve wider partners – libraries, bookshops, authors – to support longer term Reading for Pleasure provision. Kate Agnew, English Lead at Kentish Town Primary School, London, shared their work with external partners such as the charities that helped to increase access to books for families and build engagement that extended beyond World Book Day itself.
Find out more
You can listen to the episodes and access related resources via the World Book Day website. You can also find more information about the National Year of Reading and sign up to get involved.
