Arts Council England has announced the launch of a £120,000 national training initiative to raise awareness of children’s literature in primary and secondary schools. Due to commence in January 2005, the initiative is a Council collaboration with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). It will team professional librarians from Schools Library Services with trainee teachers to examine the potential of libraries and stress the importance of enthusing children about books and writers. Currently, teachers are not required to receive any specialised training in children’s literature and only limited time is spent on this area of education. The initiative addresses ever receding reading resources in schools (across the UK, spend on materials by Schools Library Services is just £1.90 per pupil – the lowest since the early 90s) and recent international research cited by the Council, showing British teenagers are already low in the scale of ‘engaged’ readers. Secretary of State for Education, Charles Clarke, said: ‘We want to increase the confidence of teachers in promoting books, reading for pleasure and the use of libraries by school children. This innovative new teacher training project supports our wider campaign to cultivate children's enjoyment of reading and writing and to promote creativity across the whole curriculum.’ Partnerships will be established and managed by the MLA’s nine Regional Agencies, working with ASCEL (the Association of Senior Children’s and Education Libraries), the Arts Council and DfES to broker relationships and monitor links between training providers, library services and the wider literature sector. For further information, CLICK HERE.