Welcome to the Learning Resource Centre. The Librarian and her team of student librarians are available to help with finding books to help with your research/homework, or to suggest books you might enjoy reading for pleasure.

We offer students and staff the following services:

• Approx. 11,500 books, almost equally divided between non-fiction and fiction
• Weekly newspapers – First News, designed primarily for years 7 – 9. It gives highlights of news from home and abroad. I chose it because it has a positive look on the world.
• The Week, designed for years 10 – 11. This looks at current affairs and gives commentaries on political and business events. This is a thought provoking paper and will help students with Citizenship/ Business Studies and General Knowledge.
• Weekly magazine – Match, kindly paid for by our superb PTA. This is for all football fans.
• Quarterly magazines – Flipside, which deals with all kinds of topics, from science to the latest gizmos. It also contains competitions with worthwhile prizes.
• Cosmos, an Australian magazine, which deals with all the latest discoveries and inventions. This is also paid for by the PTA.
• Newspaper cuttings collected into topic areas for research purposes
• Photocopying
• Audiobooks
• CDs

Students and staff are able to borrow 2 books for 2 weeks. Chess club members may have 2 chess books in addition to their allocation. The library is open every day before school from 8.15 a.m. and every evening until 4.15 p.m. There are no fines, so we rely on students remembering to return books on time. This should be easy since many classes have a regular library session once a fortnight as part of their English course. As a result of a student survey we carried out, the library is now open every day to the first 40 students, irrespective of year group. New titles suggested by students and staff are welcomed.

In addition, there are  two book clubs for years 7 – 8. These are in the form of magazines from Scholastic and Puffin. Students can choose books at reduced rates from them and the school benefits as well with vouchers for extra books for the library. Last year this came to over £500 worth of books. Everyone is welcome to join the Reading Club. The only stipulation is that you must be prepared to talk about books and share your views with others.

All students are welcome to use the LRC and we hope that we have created a peaceful yet pleasant atmosphere. If you wish to contact me you can do so anytime on s.leete@stbenedicts.essex.sch.uk. or telephone 01206 516836