National Year of Reading - English and Media Centre

For the National Year of Reading, we are sharing a series of short conversations with people who are involved in promoting reading with young people. This could be a programme, resources or a literary event, and we're giving them the opportunity to share what they do and how people can get involved.

In this episode we are joined by Andrew McCallum, Director of the
English and Media Centre. The EMC is a charity which supports English & Media teachers and students through publications and classroom resources, online and in-person CPD, student magazines and research. Established in 1990, they promote best practice in all aspects of English and Media teaching and work with teachers to further their subject knowledge and pleasure in the subject, in order that they can provide their students with the best possible experience in the classroom.

In our conversation we discuss the vital role of creative pedagogy in English education, the importance of collaboration between teachers and librarians, and the need for diverse reading materials. Andrew highlights the Centre's wide range of publications and resources aimed at enriching the teaching of English, the very collaborative nature of their work and CPD, as well as their support for initiatives such as Reading Teachers, Reading Pupils that encourage teachers to engage with children's literature. We also discuss the necessity for reform in English education to counter the decline in students choosing to carry on studying it and how to bring joy and engagement back into the curriculum - not evolution but a reading revolution.

Transcript

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Katy 0:11

Hi, I'm Katy

Ali 0:13

and I'm Ali and welcome to Masty Book Talk.

Katy 0:16

This episode is one of a series we are doing about book-related charities and what they're doing in the national year of reading.

Ali 0:22

In this episode, we talk to Andrew McCallum, who is the director of the English and Media Centre.

Katy 0:33

So we're really pleased to have with us today Andrew McCallum, who is the director of the English and Media Centre. So welcome Andrew. And do you want to just tell us a bit about what the English and Media Centre does?

Andrew 0:46

So I think the first thing to stress is we're a charity. We're set up specifically to support English and media teachers in secondary schools. That's mainly in England because we deal with the English national curriculum. But obviously, lots of what we do relates to other countries within the UK. And in fact, when we added it up, we reached 60 countries last year because we have webinars that people can access from all over the world and so on. So in terms of that support, it comes in the form of CPD, it comes in the form of publishing. So we have lots of our own books that I can talk about. We have two magazines for A-level students, one for A-level literature and language, and one for A-level media and film studies. We run conferences for A-level students, we run a media PDC course, we do a little bit of consultancy and advocacy, and the advocacy is definitely the crossover with the national year of reading.

Katy 1:44

And so tell me about how, in terms of supporting that kind of wider reading and that sort of exploration of books, and how do you do that in terms of the curriculum? Because my impression is that you're not really there doing kind of revision guides and saying this is the Mark scheme. That's not your new approach, is it?

Andrew 2:02

We we do have revision guides and we do refer to MARC schemes, but we don't like the MARC schemes, and we don't like most revision guides that are out there. So we kind of we're outliers in a way, but not by design. We're outliers because the English teaching landscape has shifted dramatically in the last 15 to 20 years. Last 10 years, very dramatically, with the kind of knowledge curriculum and how it's been imposed in a particular way on all subjects. And for us, in terms of reading, that's driven out real books from lots of classrooms.

Katy 2:36

Yeah.

Andrew 2:36

And it's driven out pedagogies that do two important things in English. They encourage young people to like and enjoy books and reading, and they encourage young people to think about books and their reading. So if you had to encapsulate our approach, it would it would be a creative one. But what that means is lots of opportunities for talk. So if you're studying a book, you have to talk about the book. And that means students talking with each other, and it means them talking in generative ways. So they're coming up with ideas with some guidance from the teacher, but not too much intervention because otherwise they simply take on board the teacher's words and they don't engage dialogically with the text itself. And that's what texts are designed for. They are not designed as didactic tones which you read and simply absorb and take as said, as read. Yeah. Nor do you take as read what the teacher tells you you have to have that engagement and that comeback.

Katy 3:35

So, in terms of starting with the CPD, what kind of CPD do you offer and would be available for is it teachers and librarians?

Andrew 3:44

It's mainly teachers, but we ran a course just a couple of weeks ago, which was fully attended, where which was for Reading for Pleasure specifically. And with one or two courses, we make them two for one, not because they're failing to sell, but because you get a better course if two people come along. And with that one, we encouraged a teacher and a librarian to come along.

Katy 4:05

Oh wow.

Andrew 4:06

And that's it's great for the English teachers there because librarians just know a ton of stuff about books, as you'd hope, particularly young people's books, that hand on heart, lots of English teachers don't know. And that was me actually for the first seven, eight, nine years of my teaching life. I'm a voracious reader, but I've stubbornly stuck to my own reading diet of adult stuff. And it was only when I very self-consciously decided I was going to commit to uh YA and children's fiction that I A had that bank of knowledge that I could use with my students, but B saw the real potential and the joys of that particular form as well.

Katy 4:45

That's really interesting. And it's interesting bringing librarians and teachers together because we definitely meet librarians who really just want to reach out to the teachers, and there is a sort of an invisible wall almost between the library and the teachers. And then we see in some schools where that relationship works really well, and then there's just this constant exchange, not just with the English teachers, but between the librarians and all of the other teachers going, Oh, you're studying this in science. Have you seen these books? And that that when that happens, you can see those books going into all subject areas and that reading going on in a very different way.

Andrew 5:21

100%. And the other great thing is that lots of non-English teachers are readers and readers of books that would relate to the English classroom. And they might have a science twist or they may well be a non-fiction book, but actually that's one of the joys of the staff room and getting kind of staff reading groups going, tons of readers out there, because that's what lots of people like to do, isn't it? And actually, if you can get a setup in school, nice displays in school where Mr. Oms So-and-so that from science or geography are reading this book, and it's not to do with their subject, but it's just that sense that you can be a reader and have other interests as well.

Katy 5:57

Yeah. So, in terms of your CPD, you're based in London. Are all of your CPDs held in London, or can you do them online or are they moved around the country?

Andrew 6:06

Um, so we like a lot of organisations, lockdown was an absolute game changer for us. We decided in May to try online stuff, priced very cheaply. And I I skeptically thought Meryl would come. And they got hundreds of people, and it means that we've carried on with that. We don't get hundreds of people, we get good numbers now. But yeah, we run about 25 courses of one kind or another each term. Yeah, seven or eight of them will be in this room, which fits 20 people in it, and it's in a wonderful building we share with the Centre for Literacy in primary education, who are now part of the National Literacy Trust, which obviously is the National Year of Reading. So our landlords are the National Year of Reading organizers, the National Literacy Trust. And then we did we'll do some full-day ones online where we limit the numbers and there's lots of use of breakout rooms, and we'll do 12 webinars a term, which you can come as a on a one-off basis, or actually schools can buy a package, very reasonably priced, and and come on all of them, and all their teachers can come on all of them or watch them on demand. They don't have to come live.

Katy 7:13

And you also mentioned that you do two magazines, yeah, and they're for people studying English, A-level, and media studies.

Andrew 7:22

E magazine. The name was devised before the internet era, so everyone thinks of email now. But e is for English.

Katy 7:30

Oh wow.

Andrew 7:31

In e magazine. It's written by academics, teachers, and students, and its main focus is uh the A-level specs. So text like uh Streetcar Name Desire, Handmaid's Tale, Hamlet, Lear, etc. There'd be lots of articles, not necessarily any given issue, but there's a huge archive that schools get access to when they subscribe. And there's Harry Styles, a bit different, isn't it? As a student, which would you choose?

Katy 7:58

Well, so you're so I should say, because for listeners, Andrew's holding up the cover of is it the what's the the media magazine? Media magazine. Media magazine, which is for media students.

Andrew 8:08

Media and film students.

Katy 8:09

Media and film students, yeah. It has a slightly racier cover.

Andrew 8:12

It has some really racy covers from time to time. We have to be quite careful what we think can go in school libraries. Yeah, same concept written by academics teachers and students.

Katy 8:22

It's between it's not quite academic journal, that sort of complexity of writing, but it is there's proper articles, aren't they, that of analysis and offer different perspectives for students to read.

Andrew 8:34

Yeah. So they the best articles will take a slightly unusual line about a particular topic. Um trying to think. So, for example, I occasionally write an article myself, so I wrote one about 1984, which looked at cognitive literary studies and how that relates to 1984, which when you when you if you reread it, which I would encourage all listeners to do, because it's a fascinating book to read for a second time.

Katy 8:57

Yeah.

Andrew 8:58

As are lots of books, if you like them, because you know what happens. So you focus on the kind of craft and the and the reveals in 1984 as a first-hand reader are massive, aren't they? Yeah. Will will don't spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it, but will Winston get called? Will he be reprogrammed? What happens to him? Reading knowing that, it's still an interesting book. And through the lens of cognitive literary studies, it's fascinating because you feel how Orwell is consciously crafting that book so it works on your mind in particular ways. So it's a classic of show, not tell. You never ever are told what Winston is thinking, Winston Smith is thinking. And yeah, it's all about his mind because it's about thought control, but you're never told what he's thinking. You've got to work out as a reader.

Katy 9:43

Yeah, that's definitely that. So that is a tip to go back and read it with that lens.

Andrew 9:47

And then and then read subscribe to eMagazine and read the article.

Katy 9:50

So the schools can subscribe to eMagazine, it goes in their library, they then can access it. Can students so they get physical copies, but they can access it online?

Andrew 9:58

You can get web only, but you can get the physical copy as well. And then you get uh you set your own username and password that all your students have access to. And you can set multiple usernames and passwords as well. If one person in your school buys it and you, as a teacher, go in and create an account, there's an area in the website which will show them the school subscribed, and you can create your own username and password, give it to your students in your class. So if it's multiple uses, yeah. And there's over a hundred back copies going to over 20 years. Yeah.

Katy 10:27

Excellent. Okay. And you also have a range of publications.

Andrew 10:31

Yeah. Yeah.

Katy 10:32

So give us a little tour of what I will.

Andrew 10:34

I've got them here to hold up. Uh but obviously you can't see if you just listen to this. We're really proud of our publications, and they've changed as the education landscapes changed. So they're much we used to publish much more resources for teaching that were big resource packs that would be photocopied.

Katy 10:50

Yep.

Andrew 10:51

And to a really high quality. Lots of that is kind of thing is available online now. And the nature of the online world is people would rather get something for free that perhaps isn't quite as good as pay for something that's, in my humble opinion, absolutely fantastic. So we've branched out to publishing more anthology-based material that we're really proud of because we think we've gifted tens, hundreds of thousands of students some amazing short stories.

Katy 11:18

Yeah.

Andrew 11:19

And short stories, I think, are a brilliant way to capture reluctant readers.

Katy 11:26

Yeah.

Andrew 11:27

And to also give all readers an insight into the more adult world of reading as a young person. So most of the stories we publish in our anthologies, not all of them, are actually by grown-up writers, right for grown-ups.

Katy 11:42

Right.

Andrew 11:43

And yet we what we do is we do a lot of reading of short stories, and we find ones we know and test out in the classroom, and it'd be brilliant. So we started off with literary shorts, I will hold it up, which is short stories from all six continents. So we have a real focus on diversity, we have a real focus on stories that center characters who historically have been marginalized in fiction. And we've always done that. We've been around for 50 years, and our publishing has always had that focus. And what was so heartening when Black Lives Matter took off in the UK was the teachers finally felt permission to buy some of these books. Right. It was interesting for us as publishers to see that suddenly people were buying books they hadn't been buying, but we think they'd always wanted to. But that that Govian agenda just crushed reading diversity in in the in many classrooms, not all. There's obviously great teachers who continue to do all sorts of things with or without permission. And the curriculum does allow for it. It's not that the official curriculum said you can't study these texts. But people felt they had to go 19th century, they had to go traditional, they had to go canon, and and suddenly they also had to go hard, too hard. This misunderstanding of how you develop your reading. You are not going to develop as a reader if your diet is solely Shakespeare and Dickens because it's too difficult. You can't access it.

Katy 13:09

And extracts, which is what my kids had through the whole of Key Stage 3.

Andrew 13:13

Yeah. I mean, like read a whole book? No.

Katy 13:16

Why would we do that?

Andrew 13:18

And it's yeah, if you can't read a whole book, read a short story. So, for example, and they are I call them canonical writers. There's a short story by Alice Walker in here, The Flowers. Yeah. You can read it in five minutes. There's a short story by Gene Reese in here, I Used to Live Here Once. You can read it in five minutes. There are also much longer stories. Some are by from the 19th century. They're by people like Thomas Hardy. So they're not all the idea with that one was to get that kind of mix. Yeah. But the bestseller, the two bestsellers, are being much more contemporary, and students love the stories. So we've got one called Iridescent Adolescence.

Katy 13:54

Yeah, I know that one. I've recommended that to quite a few schools.

Andrew 13:58

And the writings in here, some of them are big names, like George Saunders, Anita Desai, Margaret Atwood, all Chimamander Adicci.

Katy 14:07

Yep.

Andrew 14:07

Traditionally aimed at an adult audience. But these work in classrooms, year eight, nine, probably not year seven, eight, nine and above. But also some names that people aren't familiar with, but are brilliant: Jamil Jan Kotsai, Phoebe Roy, Aisha Siddiqui, who's become a bit of a bigger name since we published. And it even has a graphic short story in the middle, which teachers and students absolutely love. And it really works. If you want to show that it doesn't have to all be canonical and traditional, then that single graphic is the way to go.

Katy 14:41

Yeah.

Andrew 14:41

Shall I show you our other best selling?

Katy 14:43

Yeah, go on. Show us that one.

Andrew 14:44

That's diverse shorts, which has been around for nearly 10 years. It's got some of the pipets in there are extracts from novels rather than short stories. And there's a few more um people who write specifically for a children's NYA audience like Sita Brahmachari, David Ormond, Janita Finara, etc.

Katy 15:01

Is Sita's story in there the one that she's taken to develop to be her latest book? Phoenix Brothers?

Andrew 15:09

No, it's not. But it is in here.

Katy 15:12

Oh, okay. I knew it was somewhere. I knew, yeah. So she wrote it because I know it had the it's sort of the germ of the idea was in a short story, and then she's taken that and written the book.

Andrew 15:22

So we're getting back to Orwell actually. Actually, I mentioned him earlier, he's everywhere. Amir and George is a short story. And the reason we know these we don't we sell, so we know they're doing they've done well. Yeah. But when Cita goes around schools, that is the piece of her writing that secondary students reference.

Katy 15:38

Interesting.

Andrew 15:39

Um, and it is ever so popular. And the original short story, Amir is an Iraqi refugee, and he finds himself a year on from coming to England in a public speaking competition. It's the George Orwell Prize.

Katy 15:53

Yeah.

Andrew 15:54

He wins his school competition, and so he goes to the final, which is at an unnamed school in the short story. From memory, it's named in the novel, it's Eton. Yeah, because George Orwell went to Eden.

Katy 16:07

Yeah.

Andrew 16:08

And a teacher takes Amir there, and it transpires the teacher also went to Eden. And Dilly didn't have a great time there because he's slightly traumatised by going back. Sounds a bit like my own experience to my school. And yeah, I won't give everything away, but don't everything away. No, because that that the ending of that you don't want to give away. No, but this the speech itself narrates Amir's journey.

Katy 16:30

Yeah.

Andrew 16:31

Which is the journey that so many people go through, involving boats, hikes, horrible detention centers, channel crossings, seeking refuge, and so on. So very current and important story.

Katy 16:46

It is an important story. And they are and they are children. That's the thing that comes through the whole thing. Yeah. So are you doing anything particular? I know you're being hosted technically by the National Year of Reading. Are you doing anything special for the or particular for the National Year of Reading? You don't need to be, but is there something that you've been focusing on this year?

Andrew 17:09

I wouldn't say we've actively changed, but we have flagged up the National Year of Reading linked to various things we do, including the Reading for Pleasure course that I mentioned earlier. But what our focus is, I think it was term one of the National Year of Reading, so the January term, just gone. The focus was on reading in the classroom. And while we promote wider reading, volitional reading, reading for pleasure, whatever you want to call it, our part of our mission is to make reading in the classroom as good as it can be. And that links back to what I was talking about earlier about creative approaches to reading, a pedagogy that allows young people to have ideas about the text. And it means getting the text right, getting the balance between the canonical and the contemporary, giving students an element of choice, which you can do with short stories. We've got some great activities where you end up with different short stories circulating in the classroom at the same time. Because I think what the not I think the knowledge agenda in education left English teachers not quite knowing what to do. And what it's resulted in is at GCSE they learn every single word of a book like Christmas Carol, every single word. They've annotated every single word in that book because the knowledge equals knowing about that book. But to us, and I think to most English teachers, and certainly their degrees, that's not what knowledge in or about English is. Knowledge in English is about how you read a book and what you do with it. And so our focus is on you have to get you have to get the book choice right, but much more importantly, you have to get the pedagogy right. And that means you cannot have a model where you're just telling young people what to think about the book, which can happen if the book's too hard. So this is where the balance comes in. It's very difficult, but it's by no means impossible. And I got a sense of how important it is to have other people giving you ideas about the book and sharing ideas when I ran a course the other day looking at climate education in English. I was looking at, we've got another anthology of nature writer called Law and Wonder. And we looked at that, that's some text in there, and then we looked at a short story that's we haven't anthologised, but I hope to in the future. It's by a Japanese writer called Hiromi Kawakami, and it's called Happy New Year. And it's set in a distant future where something it's cli-fi climate fiction.

Katy 19:28

Yeah.

Andrew 19:28

Something's catastrophically has gone wrong, and the population is very sparse, and people are living quite isolated existences. And because of that, the short story is written as if language itself is atrophied, just like society's atrophied.

Katy 19:42

Okay.

Andrew 19:43

Some teachers hate it because they say, but it's language is too simple, and others absolutely love it. I get people to give it marks out of 10, and you always get a one, you always get a 10.

Katy 19:51

Yeah.

Andrew 19:51

But in this particular activity, using the chat on Zoom, I said, look, if we're teaching this in the classroom and you're thinking about this as an example of cli-fi, climate fiction, what are the likely tropes to emerge from this that might be replicated in other short stories, other forms of cli-fi? And I left them to do it in chat. And what was fascinating, I'd done a my next slide was here are the things to notice. And I had about 12 things. And I thought I'd been really comprehensive. A small group of teachers must have come up with another 20 things that's really interesting. That I'd never noticed. And without them, I would never have noticed. But you have to do that in the classroom. You have to get young people, and it just makes them so much more interested in their reading.

Katy 20:33

Yeah. And also the leap to A level, and then from A level on, if they're going to carry on studying, they they can't just be going, okay, I know what this says. I've been told what this says, and I've learnt what it says.

Andrew 20:45

Yeah, yeah. They're lost. And sadly, we are getting. Yes, we're hearing of students who are stuck when they get to A-level because they've been overly coached for GCSE. It's gotten the grades, but it's not giving them the education they need. And then they're stuck at A-level, and then they can be coached through A level sometimes as well. It's a bit harder to do that direct coaching. Then they get stuck at university.

Katy 21:08

Yeah.

Andrew 21:08

So we're not doing students any favours by silencing them in classrooms and not letting them talk about books.

Katy 21:14

Yeah. And am I right in thinking that you also run a reading teachers, reading pupils group? Or have I missed it?

Andrew 21:22

We do. I don't personally. My colleague Kate Oliver has been running that, I think, for at least five years now, probably six, and it is very successful.

Katy 21:31

Give a quick explain what that explain what it is. I've thrown it in, but I haven't explained what it is.

Andrew 21:36

RTRP, Reading Teachers, Reading Pupils. Brilliant project that was set up linked to the Charleston Literature Festival, where the notion was that if it's a bit like I was saying I didn't read children's literature for the first 10 years in my career, and then it was a revelation when I did.

Katy 21:51

Yeah.

Andrew 21:52

If you're going to teach young people to read about reading, you need to be readers yourselves and read the material that they Will want to read. So reading teachers, therefore, aids and facilitates reading pupils. And uh we've got a group of 15, I think. You come to the session, there's one every half, you discuss the book you've been reading, and then the next book is in a is wrapped up and you all open it and it's a surprise. And the books are carefully chosen by the Cheltenham Literature organizers with the lots of teachers who are involved. Really great kind of model because you get new stuff, you get a classic, and you get a graphic.

Katy 22:29

Okay.

Andrew 22:30

So you really get another kind of full package.

Katy 22:32

Sounds really interesting. So how do people get involved? So where do they find you? Are there things that you're looking to get people involved in?

Andrew 22:42

Like most things, it's the website.englishandmedia.co.uk. But if you just want a taste of what we do, there's lots of free stuff on there. There's a tab at the top called EMC Free. You've got to register, and once you register, we will send you emails about what to, which obviously you can unsubscribe from. But that's a very good way of being kept up to date. Lots of it is here's a course, so it's obviously stuff you'd your school would have to pay for, here's some books. But there is other there is lots of other stuff. For example, we run what we call an associate teacher program where we we're all teachers here, but we're not in classrooms.

Katy 23:22

Yeah.

Andrew 23:22

So to get us into classrooms and to keep us in touch, we every year recruit four, five, six classroom teachers who during the course of that year revisit them in their school to see their excellent teaching and practice. We might ask if we've got any resources we can pinch, any examples of writing for courses we're running. And the great thing is that it showed us what brilliant teachers are out there. So lots of them in the last two, and we've only been doing it two years, we're just recruiting now for the third year.

Katy 23:54

Yeah.

Andrew 23:55

And we've had at least nine teachers run CPD alongside us, present at teacher conferences that we run, write blogs.

Katy 24:05

And that must be excellent for them as well in terms of thinking about their own practice.

Andrew 24:09

I hope so and think so, yeah, because I think the I think there were more opportunities to do what we do here in other organizations in the past. I'm specifically talking about local authorities.

Katy 24:21

Yeah.

Andrew 24:22

In an age when everything wasn't quite set prescribed. Now there are still those opportunities in maths, and there are some of the some maps that are quite creative and let their directors of English do all kinds of imaginative things. But there are lots of maps that are quite prescriptive about how everyone has to operate.

Katy 24:38

We all know why. Yeah, no, we we know schools where literally every school in a MAT is on the same slide on the same day, not necessarily the same day, but the same week. This week it is we're all doing this. Yeah, and it's not it's not really hard to do anything flexible. Yeah.

Andrew 24:54

It means, yeah, what we've had three or four examples of recently is teachers getting in touch to say, I've been really happily and successfully teaching English for 15 years, and we've just been taken over by a MAT who say we've got to all do this, and it's really terrible. And it and you'll get people, people obviously leave because of the work pressures, yeah, but it people will also leave for you might call existential reasons. This is not what I signed up to do. This is not English, this is not going to instill a love of reading in young people, it's not going to make them readers. It might scrape them a GCSE but to what end? Yeah.

Katy 25:32

Yeah. Can we end on a and on a happier and more optimistic note? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, what is what are your hopes for the National Year of Reading?

Andrew 25:40

They are linked to that. Yeah.

Katy 25:42

More pessimistic. Yeah.

Andrew 25:43

It's that policymakers, MAT leaders, head teachers without an English specialism come to recognize the role that English lessons can play in promoting reading.

Katy 25:52

Yeah.

Andrew 25:52

And lots of young people still really love English lessons and have amazing English teachers. I meet amazing English teachers every week. But it it I started teaching 30 years ago. And it was, it's not a kind of myth, it's not made up to thing to say that it was for lots of students, it was their favourite subject. For lots and lots of students. Now the subject had a totally different status then. When I went to university, it sounds like speculative fiction or something, but it was like the degree to do, it was the hardest to get on. I'm just hoping it survives and becomes something vibrant, which you know this were great university. There are great university posts out there, but young people aren't applying for them.

Katy 26:38

I have one applying.

Andrew 26:40

Very good. I had two not applying, most definitely. It's become a much more gendered subject as well. It's mainly girls who are applying and who are staying on a A-level. My partner teaches in a mixed school, she regularly has whole classes that are just girls.

Katy 26:53

Yeah.

Andrew 26:53

So my hope is policymakers wake up and realize the way pedagogy has been imposed, imposed this wrong word as well, because it's just organically happened. It's a kind of Foucaultan model of governance, isn't it? Everyone feels they have to do this, but they're not quite sure why, because there's no one actively saying. And if you challenge it, say you don't have to do that. Yeah. But you kind of do. So it's that somehow the messages get through that reading has to be more vibrant in English classrooms, and that's linked to pedagogy being different. It's linked to an understanding of what knowledge in English is. It will need radical GCSE reform. Now we're about to get GCSE reform.

Katy 27:33

It's been called evolutionary, is it the word?

Andrew 27:36

Evolution, not revolution. But it has to be revolutionary. It's not going to be. But people need to realize it at some level, perhaps how it's assessed, it has to be revolutionary because it's not working. It really isn't working right now. And if you want to. This is the subject where you read books. So in an ash year of reading, it's a subject that needs looking at. And if and we all recognise it's not quite working. And we also know, most English teachers know there are some really easy answers. So it's getting a system where people feel empowered and encouraged and not scared to enact those answers because they're quite easy, quite quick fixes.

Katy 28:15

Yeah. Yeah. No, so we need a reading revolution.

Andrew 28:19

Reading revolution. And also to be realistic, it won't make every young person a reader. There are lots of forces outside the classroom. But what I always say when people say, Oh, kids aren't reading nowadays, is when I started 30 years ago, so many parents would sit down and say, they're just not reading anymore. So it's not really been any different 30 years ago. There are new pressures to do with the online world. There are differences. Lots of surveys suggest that reading has gone down. I think it's hard to argue against that. I think they can tend to sensationalise a bit as well.

Katy 28:56

Yeah.

Andrew 28:56

But there are loads of I go into a bookshop and there are actually loads of young people doing that. Again, mainly girls. But there's actually for people who do read that it's more of a thing than it used to be, I think. And it's getting that it's getting sweeping up the other people, getting them to come on board.

Katy 29:13

Brilliant. Okay. Thank you. That was a much more positive positive note to end on.