World Book Day

The cost of butter has increased by 39p since January 2024, likewise, a box of tea bags has increased by 12p, eggs by 14p per dozen and meat and fish by nearly £1 per kilogram (Office for National Statistics. 2025). This is something that has hit families hard across the country but most particularly in those areas of greatest disadvantage. Even those of us working in education have seen the impact of it. Budgets seem to stretch less and less each year; redundancies are considered and livelihoods impacted because the cost of everything has increased exponentially. And yet its is imperative we provide children with opportunities and experiences conducive to developing them academically and personally.

Take World Book Day as an example, schools open the dress code to include costumes linked to books, some even identify particular books from particular authors. These are amazing days and for those of us who are educationalists they are the fun times that truly fill our cups. Yet, as school leaders it is our absolute responsibility to consider the impact this can have on our communities. Consider the average cost of a costume for a child is between £15 and £30 and this can be a huge impact for some of our nation’s families. And yet, there are alternative options that not only reduce the cost impact on families but actually engage families in the process, can boost parental engagement and provide the ‘fill-your-cup’ moments for not only teachers and school leaders, but also the parent/carer and child bond.

As an example of this, we at Brambles Primary Academy took a different approach. Whilst for the past few years we have celebrated World Book Day in the usual fancy dress sense (with even leaders getting to together to plan coordinated costumes linked to Alice Through the Looking Glass and Mary Poppins), this year we wanted to not only reduce the cost impact on our community but also give the chance for teamwork and building family spirit by involving our wider community. We invested in plain white t-shirts for every child, with which they designed and created their own ‘costume’ linked to a book. Throughout the week building up to World Book Day, these t-shirts went home, and children worked with parents/carers to finish their designs. We also provided them with the felt tip markers needed to complete their designs (these were existing felt tips school already had in stock). This not only meant children had to choose a book to base their designs on, but they also had to have read it to understand it enough to be able to base a design on it – a double win, if you consider the need to focus on comprehension and inference. As a slight aside, the access to high quality texts has been carefully thought through so that there are many opportunities exist both in and out of school for children. So, for the grand sum of £475 spent by the academy, every child had a costume that costed exactly the same, no one was left out and all had the opportunity to engage with staff at school (who also designed t-shirts) and those at home. Whilst initially there was some reservation from parents about not dressing up, there were huge amounts of parents who purposely reached out to thank us not only for sourcing the resources but giving them the chance to work on something with their children.

If you tie this to a whole school focus on a single wordless book and the pupils composing and learning raps linked to popular texts, there was huge amounts of fun all round with zero cost – other than quality time with loved ones – to families. Don’t just take my word for it though, here is Confidence’s reflection on the work around World Book Day:

On World Book Day, we did loads of fun stuff! First, we got to design t-shirts with our parents, and the school gave us plain shirts to decorate based on our favourite books. It was awesome seeing everyone’s creative designs! Then, we learned and performed raps about popular books. I love performing and it was so much fun and everyone was really supportive. We also did some work on this cool book called Flotsam. The pictures were amazing, and we got to talk about the story and what we thought it meant. It was such a fun day, and I felt like I really got to celebrate reading!