Following on from our Year 12 trip to the national Lit in Colour conference last week, another part of The Island VI Form being a 2023 Lit in Colour pioneer school is the wonderful library we have been given by Edexcel and the programme’s partners, in particular Penguin Books and The Runnymede Trust.

In all the library contains about 300 texts, and it ranges from Key Stage 3 through to A level, covers non-fiction, poetry and prose, and includes current authors like Bernardine Evaristo, Yaa Gyasi, Benjamin Zephaniah and Caleb Azumah Nelson, as well as historical writers of colour, all helping to extend the diversity of the reading experience available to our students. In particular, our A level English Literature students have been able to use the library straightaway to make their own choices for the texts they will study for their coursework project, as well as Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire and Lynn Nottage’s Sweat that they are reading for their exams. There are books from the collection that can be borrowed from the Carisbrooke and Medina College Libraries, and from our A level Literature classrooms at VI Form.

Huge thanks go to Edexcel and the organisers for such an inspiring initiative, and we can’t wait to share the books with as many of our students as possible in the future.

A level English Literature teachers Mrs Carroll and Mr Saunders and their students with the new Lit in Colour library