ESB is delighted to hear the announcement made by BookTrust that a free copy of an anthology of children’s books by black British authors is to be provided to every primary school in England together with free curriculum resources from August onwards.

The collection of stories, Happy Here, is a collaboration between Book Trust, publisher Knights Of and the charity Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) and is aimed at children aged seven and older.

ESB’s Chief Executive, Tina Renshaw says, “What a fantastic gift to primary schools! We wholeheartedly support this initiative and the fantastic aim to enhance the diversity of voices published in children’s literature.

“We look forward to hearing our learners choose to read some of these stories in their assessments and to hear this rich diversity of voices”.

Read more about this exciting project here.

Our 12,000 learners who annually achieve an ESB speech qualification are asked to select a favourite book and prepare an excerpt to read as part of their assessment as demonstrated below.

Books play an important role in shaping children’s lives: they open up new worlds, experiences and perspectives, as well as developing vocabulary.  As we ask our learners to read out loud from a favourite book and introduce why they chose it, ESB encourages the development of confidence in reading aloud, clear and audible speech, vocal variety, vocabulary, word sounds and blending, and at the same time hopefully instils in them a love of reading for pleasure.

If any schools would like to know more about our Speech qualifications, please contact our Product Development team at product@esbuk.org.