SCHOOL LIBRARIES

Foyle School Library Scheme

The Foyle Foundation has now closed the Foyle School Library Scheme, our major national literacy improvement scheme.  It began in 2009 following research which recognised that there is no statutory requirement for state schools to have a library and that many school libraries are in a desperate situation through underfunding and underdevelopment.

To date the Foyle Foundation has awarded over £12M to 2,167 individual state schools across the U.K. to invest in their library provision, the majority of which are primary schools.

In our final year we have increased our budget for the Foyle School Library Scheme and to date have awarded a record £1.37M to 268 state schools with further grants to be approved before the yearend.

Libraries for Primaries Campaign

As the Foyle School Library Scheme ends in 2024, we begin our partnership with the National Literacy Trust from September 2024 as the Lead Partner on phase two of their Libraries for Primaries Campaign*, which aims to ensure that every primary school in the UK has a high-quality, well-stocked, expertly managed dedicated library space.  This funding support from the Foyle Foundation will be the catalyst for fundraising for the second phase of the campaign which aims to put a library in every school in the UK that needs one by 2028.

*Founded in November 2021 by the National Literacy Trust and Penguin Books, the Libraries for Primaries campaign (formerly the Primary School Library Alliance) is a group of organisations who work to address the lack of investment in primary school libraries. By Spring 2024, they successfully transformed 1,000 primary school libraries and trained over 2,000 teachers and support staff.  The next phase of the campaign is to ensure that every primary school in the UK has a library or dedicated library space.