Books for Secondary Schools

Description

A Preliminary Market Engagement event is being undertaken to understand market capacity and capability to help DfE deliver support to secondary schools in the £5 million Books for Secondary Schools programme, in order to maximise its impact. This engagement seeks to explore opportunities for philanthropic funders, business sponsors, charitable organisations, school reading book suppliers and other relevant partners to work alongside DfE to amplify the impact of this investment. We want to explore how additional resources, expertise and networks could be leveraged to increase access to, and engagement with, books and other reading materials for secondary school pupils across England. The engagement will explore how best to maximise the programme’s investment and support the National Year of Reading to improve reach and sustainability. We want to understand how partners can help ensure the investment directly benefits all children, including by addressing barriers to access and boosting reading. The Department for Education will hold a webinar via Microsoft Teams on Wednesday 29th April 2026. This will run for approximately 1 hour. A questionnaire will be issued following the webinar via Microsoft Forms and will be sent out via Jaggaer (the department’s e-sourcing system).