RCF Model Paper: OCR Component 01

An original RCF composition written in a nineteenth-century voice. It is presented as an address to the ratepayers of a northern manufacturing town in 1861, reported in the local newspaper, in which a councillor argues that the town should adopt the Free Libraries Act.

The Question of a Free Library

1 Gentlemen, - I am aware that I have been described in this room as a man who wishes to spend your money upon novels, and I had better begin by admitting that I do wish to spend your money, though not upon novels.

4 The proposal before you is a penny in the pound. For that penny you would have a building, warmed and lighted, open from eight in the morning until ten at night, containing books which any man in this town might read without paying and without asking anybody's permission. I have heard three objections to it, and I shall take them in their order.

10 The first is that the working man does not want books. I would answer that in Manchester, where the experiment has been tried, the reading room was used last year by eleven thousand persons, of whom the greater number were working men, and that the committee there has twice been obliged to enlarge the premises. A want which has to be enlarged twice in four years is not an imaginary one.

17 The second objection is that he would read the wrong ones. I confess I find this the strangest of the three. We do not say of a man who has never eaten that he must not be fed until he can be trusted to choose his dinner. He will read what is put before him; what is put before him is a matter for the committee; and the committee, gentlemen, is you.

23 The third objection is the honest one, and it is the penny. I shall not pretend that the sum is nothing to a man who counts pennies, for I have counted them myself. But I would ask those gentlemen who feel it most keenly to consider what else the penny buys. It buys, in this town, a very great deal of gin. I am told that the public houses of this parish take more upon a single Saturday than the library would cost the parish in a year, and I have never once heard it argued in this room that the working man cannot afford that.

32 I will put the case at its lowest, since the highest has been laughed at. I do not say that a library will make men virtuous. I say that upon a wet evening in February a man who is out of work has, at present, the choice of a cold room or a warm public house, and that we propose to offer him a third door. Whether he goes through it is his affair. That it should be standing there is ours.

39 I move that the Act be adopted.

An original RCF composition. It is presented as a piece written in 2024 by a librarian in a small branch library, published on a website that carries writing about working life.

The Warm Room

1 People ask what I do all day and I have stopped trying to answer, because the honest version sounds either boring or invented.

3 This morning, before eleven, I have renewed a large-print novel for a woman who has read every other one we own; explained twice that we cannot print in colour; found a man the form he needed and then, because the form was impossible, filled most of it in with him; told a toddler that we do not lick the dinosaur book; and helped a woman of about seventy send her first email, which was to her grandson, and which took forty minutes and was three lines long. In none of that did anybody borrow anything, and I would say all of it was library work.

12 The thing nobody outside the building quite understands is how little of this is about reading. We are the last indoor place in this town centre where a person can sit down for two hours without buying something. That is the whole of it, and everything else follows from that one fact: the man with the form, the students in September, the four regulars who arrive at ten past nine for the newspapers, the mother who comes in with a pushchair because it is raining and there is nowhere else to be.

20 In winter it is more obvious. We had a hundred and forty people through the door on the coldest day in January, and I know, because I was watching, that a good number of them took nothing at all off the shelves. Nobody says I am here because my heating is off. They say they are looking for something and cannot remember what it is called.

26 I am supposed to have opinions about this. The council would prefer the figures to be about issues - books out, books back - because issues can be counted and warmth cannot. And issues are down. I am not going to pretend otherwise. But I have started keeping a tally of my own, which is not official and would embarrass everybody if it were, of the number of conversations in a day that go on longer than the task required. It runs at about thirty.

34 I do not want to make this sound noble. Half of it is admin and a quarter of it is the printer. But when people write that libraries are finished because everybody has the internet at home, I would like to put them behind my desk for one Tuesday. Not everybody has the internet at home. Not everybody has a home that is warm at eleven in the morning. And there is nobody else left doing this, which is either an argument for us or an indictment of everything else, and most days I am too busy to work out which.

Answer all the questions in this section. You are advised to spend about 1 hour on this section. [40 marks]

Question 1 [2 marks]

Look again at lines 3 to 11 of Text 2.

Give two things the writer did in the library before eleven o'clock that morning.

[2 marks]

Question 2 [2 marks]

Look again at lines 12 to 25 of Text 2.

Explain two reasons the writer gives for saying that people come to the library for something other than books.

[2 marks]

Question 3 [6 marks]

Both writers describe people who use a library for something other than reading.

Using information from both texts, synthesise what the two writers say about these people and about why they come.

[6 marks]

Question 4 [12 marks]

Text 1 only.

Explore how the writer uses language and structure to persuade the ratepayers to vote for the library. Support your answer with reference to the text.

[12 marks]

Question 5 [18 marks]

Both texts.

"Neither of these writers is really arguing about books."

How far do you agree, and how convincingly does each writer make their case?

In your answer you should:

[18 marks]

• compare the two writers' ideas and perspectives, and how these are conveyed;
• evaluate how effectively each writer achieves what they set out to do;
• support what you say with quotations from both texts.

Answer one question in this section. You are advised to spend about 1 hour, including planning and checking. [40 marks]

Twenty-four marks are for content and organisation, and sixteen for vocabulary, sentence structure, spelling and punctuation. Presentational features such as columns, boxes and headings are not assessed on this component, so do not spend time drawing them.

Either Question 6 [40 marks]

Your local council has proposed closing the branch library in your area.

Write a speech to be delivered at a public meeting, persuading the councillors present to keep it open.

In your speech you could write about:

[40 marks]

• who uses the library, and what they use it for;
• what would be lost if it closed;
• the objections you expect, and your answers to them.

Or Question 7 [40 marks]

A website for young people is running a series called What that place is actually for.

Write an article for the site explaining to readers of your own age what a public library is for now, and whether it still matters.

In your article you could write about:

[40 marks]

• what people your age think a library is;
• what happens there that they may not know about;
• what you think it is really for.