Temporary classrooms planned for pupils at new Preston primary
A new primary school had originally been expected to open on the site in September 2026, but the council said more time would be required for its construction after a revised application was lodged.Redrawn plans, seen by the LDRS, show the proposed capacity of the school has increased, with 420 pupils now expected to be accommodated at the new establishment.Back in February, a proposal was submitted for a school catering for 210 pupils – a figure based on one new entry class of 30 reception pupils being admitted each year over the course of seven years.However, the latest planning application reveals the now Reform UK-run authority has chosen to revert to a higher pupil tally, first mooted six years ago.The new plans come after the council was forced, in May, to abandon separate plans to expand nearby Goosnargh Oliverson's Church of England Primary School amid concerns amongst residents the move would cause traffic chaos in the village.
'Demand for places'
The current plan is to build a single-storey facility, to include 15 classrooms, a special educational needs unit, an integrated dining hall and dedicated play and games areas.The application has been submitted by Lancashire County Council's education department and will be determined by the authority's independent, cross-party development control committee.A County Hall spokesperson said: "We are exploring increasing the Whittingham school to a two-form entry site to ensure we are meeting the demand for places in the area."The scope of the school will allow the maximum number of reception pupils to be admitted each year – taking the school's total roll call to 420 by the early 2030s.The LDRS understands the council intends to install two temporary classrooms on the site over the next 12 months, along with other necessary school accommodation.Subject to planning permission being granted, the classes for up to 60 reception-aged pupils would then be in situ for the start of the 2026/27 academic year.Those students would become the first intake for the new school, while the permanent facility was being constructed on the surrounding land.Should the planning process derail the temporary school in any way, education chiefs may seek to build it somewhere else – but it is understood that is not their preference.
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Another mother tells me: 'I have three teenage sons and have not seen them pick up a book since the age of 12. One even got a 7 in GCSE English Literature, despite not reading any of the set texts. Boys don't seem to 'get' fiction after a certain age. Is the link just b----y phones?' New figures from the National Literacy Trust released in June reveal that fewer children enjoy reading in their free time than at any time since the charity started collecting data in 2005. Just one in three children and young people aged eight to 18 reported enjoying reading 'very much' or 'quite a lot' in 2025, which at 32.7 per cent is almost 2 percentage points lower than the previous year. Compared with 2005, the drop is far sharper, with 36 per cent fewer children and young people now saying they enjoy reading in their free time. Meanwhile, the number of eight to 18-year-olds who report reading something in their free time every day has halved in the past two decades, from 38.1 per cent to 18.7 per cent. This applies even to some English A-level students. 'They do not seem to like reading, and I often get the impression they haven't read the texts fully,' one secondary school English teacher tells me. 'The first thing they look at is how many pages a novel has, coupled with a groan.' The situation continues for university-age students. One recent English literature graduate from Newcastle University admits to resorting to AI overviews to cope with her two Victorian modules. 'It's nuts,' she says, 'I'd be sitting in seminars and no one wanted to start speaking – because no one had read the book.' The worry is that teenagers who don't like books are more likely to become adults who don't like books. I would argue they simply haven't found the right title, but not everyone wants to hear that. Often, I can't even tell my own daughter what I think she might enjoy next (Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, for the record). 'Some people just don't understand that reading is for them, I think,' Ann Cleeves, the Whitley Bay-based author behind the popular ITV drama Vera, tells me. 'It's a class thing. If you've been to school, and you've been put off school because you haven't enjoyed it, you leave and might find libraries intimidating.' A charity Cleeves has founded locally, Reading for Wellbeing, is attempting to change that via 'lots and lots' of book groups in the North East. It doesn't judge its readers' tastes, whether that's erotic fiction because someone enjoyed EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey or Toshikazu Kawaguchi's popular Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. 'Our philosophy is if you're having a good time with a book, then it's a good book,' says Cleeves. It is advice that more schools ought to follow, I realise after talking to Sam Smith, a secondary school librarian at St Mary's Catholic School in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire. Changing the perception of reading from 'being a chore to being fun' is key, he says. In his library, anything goes, from romance and dark fantasy ('not necessarily a problem as long as it's for their age range') to plenty of football-related material, including unsold Premier League programmes, his top tip for reluctant readers. Making something fun is often as easy as doing it with fun people, which is why book clubs remain a phenomenon. Data from event listing companies such as Meetup and Eventbrite point to a boom in book-based gatherings. I can vouch for loving the regular evenings I spend with three friends talking about what we've read – although we call it 'friends with books' rather than a book club. Lucas Oakeley, a debut novelist from south London, runs a monthly men-only gathering, which meets in the foyer of London's National Theatre. 'Book clubs tend to be majority women. We've found fiction is a great way to talk about the world; people open up a lot,' he says. John Boyne's Earth, about a sexual assault case in the football world, was the last pick; other choices have ranged from Percival Everett's The Trees to Jilly Cooper's Imogen. 'Half the people come because they want to get back into reading. Life is hard, life is fast: a book club gives you a reason to set aside the time,' he adds. The shift to audio The demise of reading, however, is a greater cultural shift than any number of ad-hoc meet-ups can fix. 'There is an intergenerational challenge which seems to be growing all the time,' says Teresa Cremin, a professor of education at The Open University. 'We are not just talking about a decline with kids but with adults, too. That's serious, because it means we are shifting as humans,' says Cremin, citing figures from the 2024 Reading Agency report that showed nearly one quarter of people aged 16 to 24 have never seen themselves as readers. 'We are the reading role models for our young. If a quarter of potential parents don't have that sense of identity as a reader, that will create problems for their children,' she adds. Audiobooks are one obvious solution; according to the Publishers Association, UK downloads increased by 17 per cent between 2022 and 2023. 'The shift to audio is huge. Listening, reading, we are happy with either,' says Prior, pointing out that growth isn't coming at the expense of the overall book market. 'We are getting new people coming to books who weren't reading previously. That is exciting.' Technology, clearly, isn't all bad news. 'We can't think of ourselves in opposition to the phone,' adds Prior, citing the reading communities that exist on TikTok as one screen-based positive. Surprisingly AI might even offer another way back into the book habit. Many people already use Blinkist, a Berlin-based company that has provided 15-minute summaries of hundreds of fiction and non-fiction books, in both text and audio format, since 2021. Just think, you could knock off Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens and Charles Dickens's Bleak House while walking the dog. Then again, is this even new? Reader's Digest, the magazine that started as a collection of condensed articles, closed down its UK print edition last year but still offers bite-sized Fiction Favourites. Rohit Talwar is a futurist who advises blue-chip companies. New ways to consume content, possibly via brain implants, are on the way, he says. 'People will have implants, or some other mechanism, digitally downloading information to their brains, including digital forms of stories. If that information is a novel, does that still count as reading if you haven't consumed it with your eyes?' He adds: 'The nature of us reading and engaging with content will change quite significantly again over the next five to 10 years. Virtual and augmented reality will put us in stories in a more immersive way, such as being a character. We will be able to follow the [narrative] from the perspective of different characters, almost as if you are in a live performance.' Regaining the ability to read What we won't get from AI summaries or plot narratives zapped into our hippocampus, says Horowitz, is the 'intellectual growth' that comes from working through passages of text. Young people using digital shortcuts 'are missing out on something which I have always found to be wonderful: intellectual curiosity,' he adds. Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and the author of The Reading Mind, is blunt about cutting corners. 'It's analogous to 'You get what you pay for'. The amount of time you spend thinking about ideas is very important to the duration those ideas will stick in your memory.' Vicki Perrin is the chief executive of The Queen's Reading Room, a charity-cum-book club. She would like to find a reading equivalent of 10,000 steps or eating your five-a-day of fruit and vegetables. 'Why not start with reading a book for five minutes a day?' she suggests. Eight years ago, John Hayes, a 56-year-old employment lawyer, tried something similar to revive his lost reading mojo. 'I felt I was missing out,' he says. 'I wanted greater stillness, away from a screen, so I forced myself to read 10 pages per day – about an average book length per month. 'Now, reading is one of the most enjoyable things I do; an interior, private world away from the maelstrom of family and law. Away from demands. And now, I must get back to my biography of Thomas More, the new one by Joanne Paul…'
