The scheme is currently only available in Knottingley, Pontefract, Castleford Central, Ferry Fryston and Airedale. <\/p>\n
However, councillors recently voted to back plans to expand to Featherstone, Hemsworth, Normanton, South Elmsall and South Kirkby, Wakefield East, Wakefield North, Wakefield West.<\/p>\n
It comes after 337 children who have been part of the scheme “graduated” at events held in Airedale and Pontefract libraries.<\/p>\n
Jakob Williamson, independent councillor for Hemsworth, said the cost of expanding the scheme would be \u00a3425,000 over the next five years, describing it as a “minuscule” investment.<\/p>\n
“Expanding this scheme is quite personal to me,” he said in the meeting. <\/p>\n
“I’m not afraid to say that I have grown up in poverty and experienced hardship.<\/p>\n
“There wasn’t much money growing up, but the one thing I had was a mum and a grandma who gave me books, whether that was from the library, second-hand books, or the occasional new one.<\/p>\n
“Having that early access to books and being able to read enabled me to get good grades at GCSE, go on to study at university and end up with a law degree and a half-decent job.”<\/p>\n
He said data showed learning development rates had improved within other areas where councils had invested in the scheme.<\/p>\n
According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the Wakefield district falls behind regional and national averages when it comes to skills and educational attainment.<\/p>\n
Official data shows only 28.8% of people aged 16 to 64 in Wakefield hold qualifications at Level 4 , external<\/a>or above. This figure is substantially below the national average of 46.7% and the Yorkshire and Humber regional average of 41.2%.<\/p>\n Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds<\/a>, catch up with the latest episode of Look North<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The scheme is currently only available in Knottingley, Pontefract, Castleford Central, Ferry Fryston and Airedale. However, councillors recently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[457,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-59263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}