Submitted by Bill Fernie
29th August 2026
There are some government programmes whose real value is difficult to measure simply by counting the money spent or the number of items distributed. Scotland's Bookbug programme is one of them.
At first glance it looks almost ridiculously simple. Give young children free books. Encourage parents and carers to read, sing and talk with them. Hold sessions in libraries and community venues. Then give children more books as they grow.
But behind those books is something considerably more important. Bookbug has become part of Scotland's early-years infrastructure, reaching into family life, children's language development, parenting, mental wellbeing, libraries, health visiting, communities and, in some circumstances, even prisons.
And that is why the current financial squeeze deserves rather more attention than it has received.
The interesting thing is that Bookbug itself has not suffered a straightforward government funding cut. The Scottish Government's core Bookbug grant was £1.666 million in 2021/22, increased to £1.775 million in 2022/23 and then remained at £1.8 million in each of 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26.
In other words, the headline figure has been protected. But keeping a grant at £1.8 million for three years is very different from increasing it in line with the cost of delivering the programme.
And now there are signs that the pressure is being felt elsewhere.
Scottish Book Trust has announced that, because of funding restrictions, it will no longer be able to provide the Bookbug Explorer Resource Kits to early-years settings in 2026. The Bookbug bags themselves continue, but some of the supporting resources that helped nurseries and early-years practitioners get more from the programme have been removed.
That is an important distinction. A programme does not have to be formally cut for its effectiveness to be squeezed.
How Bookbug began
Bookbug is not some recent Scottish Government invention. Its roots go back to Bookstart, a book-gifting programme that began as a local project in Birmingham in 1992 and subsequently spread across the UK.
Scotland developed its own version, with Bookbug replacing Bookstart in 2010. It was designed specifically for Scotland, with Scottish authors and illustrators and links to Scottish education and parenting policies. The distinctive Bookbug character was created by Scottish author and illustrator Debi Gliori.
From the beginning, the idea was much broader than simply putting a book into a child's hands.
The programme was designed around the idea that babies and young children learn through talking, singing, listening, playing and sharing experiences with the adults around them. A book becomes a vehicle for all of those things.
The programme has subsequently expanded. Children receive free Bookbug bags at different stages from birth through to Primary 1, while Bookbug Sessions take place in libraries and community venues across Scotland. There are also Gaelic Bookbug bags and tactile books for children who need additional support.
Bookbug for the Home takes the idea further still, with trained practitioners taking the Bookbug approach directly into family homes. It is now available in all 32 Scottish local authorities.
This is where the programme becomes much more interesting than a simple free-book scheme.
What if a parent doesn't find reading easy?
It is tempting to imagine that every parent knows instinctively how to read with a small child.
But that isn't necessarily true.
Some parents may have had poor experiences of education themselves. Some may have literacy difficulties. Some may simply have never experienced reading as part of family life.
The Scottish Government's research into Bookbug found that parents who received and used the initial Bookbug pack reported reading or looking at books more frequently with their children at around ten months.
The researchers were careful, however, not to claim that Bookbug alone caused this difference. Families who used Bookbug may already have been more inclined towards reading.
That caveat is important. But it doesn't make the programme unimportant. In fact, it points towards something potentially more valuable.
Giving somebody a book is one thing. Showing them how to use that book to communicate with their child is something else.
This is why Bookbug Sessions and targeted programmes such as Bookbug for the Home matter. They can turn a book from an object into an opportunity.
A parent who is uncomfortable reading aloud does not necessarily have to "read" in the traditional sense. They can look at pictures with the child, ask questions, make up a story, sing a rhyme or simply talk about what is happening on the page.
The child is learning language. The parent is learning how to engage. And the relationship between them is being strengthened.
That is a considerably bigger return than the cost of the book.
It is not just about literacy
The evidence around Bookbug has increasingly moved beyond the narrow question of whether children can read.
Scottish Book Trust's evidence review identifies benefits associated with early sharing of stories, songs and rhymes in areas including early language development, bonding and attachment, parental wellbeing and mental health. It also specifically examines children needing additional support and families experiencing adversity.
Research into Bookbug Sessions found that 95% of parents and carers surveyed believed the sessions had a positive effect on the bond between themselves and their child, while 94% said they had a positive effect on their own wellbeing.
That matters.
For a new parent, particularly somebody who is isolated, a weekly Bookbug session can be one of the few regular opportunities to get out of the house, meet other parents and have a structured activity with their child.
One parent in the research described Bookbug as helping her socialise with other mothers and children after arriving in a new city. Another described the sessions as helping her as an isolated first-time mother.
There was also a striking comment from a father about meeting other dads and gaining experience from them.
That is easily overlooked when the programme is described simply as "free books".
And then there are fathers
There has historically been a tendency to think about early-years reading as something primarily done by mothers.
The evidence suggests that is too narrow.
The independent Bookbug evaluation specifically examined fathers and noted evidence of the important contribution fathers can make to children's language development through reading and interaction.
That becomes particularly significant when we look at some of the more unusual uses of the Bookbug approach.
Scotland has experimented with Bookbug in prisons, designed to help prisoners who were parents improve their interaction with their young children through talking, reading, singing, playing and cuddling.
The scheme did not attract the level of participation hoped for, and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise. But it produced another benefit: prison staff were trained in positive parenting and in helping prisoners develop better relationships with their children.
The Scottish Government's more recent review of family support for people in prison still identifies the Bookbug in Prisons initiative as an example of an approach intended to strengthen parent-child relationships.
This is an important reminder that early-years literacy is sometimes also family intervention, parenting support and rehabilitation.
A father in prison reading a story with his child may not look like an education policy statistic.
But maintaining a relationship between a father and his child can have consequences that reach far beyond the pages of a book.
The universal approach is part of the magic
Perhaps one of Bookbug's greatest strengths is that it is universal.
It does not arrive with a label saying: "This family needs help."
Every child gets the opportunity.
That matters because stigma can be a powerful barrier to accepting support.
A family experiencing poverty receives the same brightly presented book bag as a family living in a much more comfortable home. A child whose parents have university degrees gets the same books as a child whose parents struggled at school.
The universal approach creates a shared culture around reading.
Research commissioned by Scottish Book Trust found that 87% of parents and carers surveyed agreed that the book bags helped them bond with their children, 84% said the bags encouraged them to read together earlier than they otherwise would have done, and 83% said the bags helped start their child on the journey towards becoming a lifelong reader.
But the research also provides a warning.
Families in the most deprived areas were somewhat less likely to remember receiving the bags and less likely to use them frequently.
So universal provision does not mean everybody benefits equally.
It means everybody gets the opportunity. The next challenge is making sure those who face the greatest barriers receive the additional help necessary to make use of it.
That is precisely where targeted work such as Bookbug for the Home becomes important.
The hidden value of a book
There is another reason why Bookbug deserves attention at a time when governments everywhere are looking for savings.
A £1.8 million annual programme sounds like a substantial amount of public money.
But in the context of the Scottish Government's overall budget it is tiny.
And the programme does not operate in isolation. It makes use of libraries, health visitors, early-years workers, community venues, trained practitioners and other existing networks.
That means the value created by Bookbug cannot sensibly be measured simply by dividing £1.8 million by the number of books distributed.
The books are the visible part.
The conversations between parent and child are invisible.
The confidence gained by a parent is invisible.
The friendship made by a new mother at a library session is invisible.
The father who discovers that reading a story gives him a way of connecting with his child is invisible.
The child who hears hundreds of new words before starting school is invisible in the accounts.
The parent who perhaps never enjoyed reading at school but discovers that they can share a picture book with their child is invisible too.
These are precisely the sorts of outcomes that traditional government accounting struggles to capture.
So has Bookbug actually been cut?
Technically, the answer is no, at least not in the straightforward sense of the Scottish Government reducing the core Bookbug grant.
But that isn't the end of the story.
A grant frozen at £1.8 million for three consecutive years is being asked to deliver a programme in an environment where costs do not stand still.
And Scottish Book Trust has now acknowledged that funding restrictions mean some supporting resources have had to go.
That raises a much bigger question about public spending.
Should governments protect the headline programme while allowing the supporting infrastructure around it gradually to shrink?
It is an especially important question for programmes aimed at early intervention.
Once a child has fallen behind in language development, literacy or confidence, putting things right later can require considerably more money and effort.
Prevention is rarely as dramatic as intervention. Nobody gets a headline for the child who never developed a problem because somebody spent ten minutes reading a story with them every evening.
Yet that may be precisely where some of the greatest value lies.
The Dolly Parton comparison
This is where the Dolly Parton Imagination Library story becomes particularly interesting.
As you have noted, the apparently simple idea of giving children books can involve a complicated mixture of government support, charitable funding, foundations, businesses and other organisations.
Bookbug is different because Scotland has chosen to make it a national public programme. But it is increasingly operating within the same wider financial environment in which organisations are being asked to find other sources of money to maintain services.
That should make us cautious about celebrating a programme simply because its core government grant has not been cut.
The better question is whether the whole service is being maintained.
If the books continue to arrive but the supporting sessions, training, outreach and resources become harder to provide, the programme may still exist on paper while becoming less effective in practice.
That is a much more subtle form of cutback.
Perhaps Bookbug is a lesson in what government should measure
There is an argument that government should become much better at measuring the return on relatively small preventative programmes.
Bookbug is a good example.
It sits at the intersection of education, health, family relationships, mental wellbeing, social inclusion, parenting and community development.
Trying to put its benefits into a single departmental budget is almost impossible.
The education department may see a literacy programme.
The health service may see early-years development and parental wellbeing.
Social services may see family support.
Libraries may see community engagement.
Prison services may see opportunities to maintain family relationships.
Parents may simply see a free bag of books and a pleasant morning out with their child.
All of those descriptions can be true at the same time.
That is why the headline figure can be misleading.
Bookbug hasn't been cut — but if the resources around it are being squeezed, Scotland should be asking what it is losing before the accountants can see it in a spreadsheet.
A £1.8 million investment may look like a cost.
But if it helps thousands of families talk, read, sing and spend time together at the very beginning of a child's life, perhaps the more useful question is not "How much does Bookbug cost?"
It is: "How much might it cost us if programmes like Bookbug gradually disappear?"
Bookbug web site
Dolly Parton Imagination Libary UK
Bill Fernie
Note
The passing of Dolly Parton and reading more about her Imagination programm to supply kids with free books made me think about how a book programme called Bookbug was doing here in Scotland. I was inspired many years ago after visiting a meeting in Edinburgh where a government minister presented awards to young mohers who had learned to read with their childen and how the bookbug programme had changed their lives. A couple of years later at presentation by a prisoner about how he got involved with bookbug and read with his child during vists by his family. These two instances cshowd to me the value of reading far beyond the basic supply of free books and how we should all watch cuts to such programmes or facilities like libraries that support them. Reading opens doors hat without learning to read well remains closed for a lifetime.