25 ways to create a non-reading school

This list is continually evolving and growing. Please feel free to add your suggestions.

1. Incomplete sets of books in the library and classroom are crucial. Having the Alex Rider series on the shelf with books 1, 3 and 8 missing is perfect. Point out that they were only bought ten years ago and really should have been looked after better.
2. Do not model reading in class. Ever. During quiet reading time, make sure you’re either inputting data on your school's pupil tracking system or tidying up a Geography display.
3. If you’re lucky enough to have an author, poet, illustrator or storyteller ever visit the school, make sure at least half the pupils are unable to attend the sessions because they’re doing a SPAG assessment.
4. When ‘reading for pleasure', children must always make some kind of record of it in their reading journals. After all, that's what proper readers do.
5. Never allow a child any time to select a book. Explain to them that you’ll count down from five and whatever they’re holding when you get to zero is their reading book for the next week. At least.
6. If a child tells you that they spent an hour reading a wonderful book at home but forgot to sign their reading record, spend at least thirty seconds shaking your head in disapproval. Remember, it's all about the evidence.
7. Always ensure that children are reading a book which is exactly the right level for them. They should not be reading books which are too simple or too challenging. This is an effective way to show a child how good they are at reading.
8. Do not engage with your Schools Library Service, the local library or any kind of children's bookshop. Have as few people with a passion for reading visit the school as possible.
9. If you’re reading a class novel, make sure it’s the same one you’ve read for the past five years, especially if you worked in Year Six for that time and are now teaching in Year One.
10.  Have posters round the school displaying the books that various members of staff are reading. Make sure that they show the same book all year and are never updated. Even better, keep up the posters of staff who left the school a couple of years ago.
11.  Make it as difficult as possible for children to visit the school library by not having it open for most of the day. Children should be changing their books once a week, and not more or less frequently. If they’ve finished a book before their library visit is due, then they must read it again. The library must never be accessible before school or after school.
12.  Keep old, tatty and out-of-date books (Will Humans Ever Visit The Moon?) and try to spend the least amount possible on new reading material.
13.  Ignore poetry completely. Explain to the children that it very rarely comes up in SATs these days.
14.  When reading a shared book, don’t give out more than one copy for every four children (this includes tatty photocopies). The less time they spend in physical contact with a book, the better.
15.  However big your classroom is, it certainly isn't big enough for cushions, reading corners, author displays, recommendation shelves, etc.
16.  Occasionally tell the children that you really enjoy reading but never, ever be more specific. Do not mention actual books, authors, illustrators, etc.
17.  Continually reinforce the message that magazines, comics, newspapers and football programmes are not books and therefore not really proper reading.
18.  If you’re teaching in Year Six, remember that the only independent reading the children can do after Christmas is past SATs papers.
19.  Provide parents with a handy list of differentiated questions they can ask their children when reading at home. Most of them should contain the word 'infer'.
20.  Try to make sure that the library has as many other purposes as possible. Parent groups, one-to-one tuition (which obviously needs to be done in silence), storage of the iPad trollies, music lessons, etc. Be creative!
21.  Independent reading time should be silent and as uncomfortable as possible. Have children sitting upright at their desks and don’t let them share books with friends or talk about them as they read.
22.  It’s essential that pupils don’t have any ownership of reading in the school. No pupil librarians, no input into choosing books, no recommendations to their peers and no helping with displays.
23.  Never hold special assemblies about just books. One every year on World Book Day is more than sufficient. A generic PowerPoint should do the trick.
24.  Five minutes at the start of a staff meeting sharing a couple of books that the children have enjoyed (or that staff have enjoyed) is five minutes wasted.
25.  Always find a reason to cancel class story time. Tidy the cloakrooms, hand out letters, search for missing packed lunchboxes, etc.