Neil Gaiman, Antonia Fraser, Philip Pullman and Malorie Blackman are among more than 150 signatories to a letter calling on secretary of state for education Justine Greening to halt the decline in school libraries or “consign a generation to a lifetime of low attainment and mobility”.

Headed by Dawn Finch of library and information association CILIP, the letter’s signatories are asking Greening to make an “urgent intervention” to stop the drop in school libraries and in qualified school librarians. According to CILIP, an estimated 30% of the school librarian workforce has been lost.

Signed by names including the former children’s laureate Chris Riddell, the author Cressida Cowell and the poet Roger McGough, the letter says that “since 2008, the provision of adequately staffed libraries in schools and colleges with up-to-date learning and reading resources has declined sharply”.

School libraries are not a statutory requirement, and the letter shares figures from one split-site state secondary, which since 2014 has lost its school librarians. In 2014, between September and November, when the school had a full-time librarian on each site, 1508 books were loaned to children. Over the same period in 2017, when the school had no librarians at all, children borrowed just 48 books.

“These figures represent a 97% decline in books issued to children at that school to support their learning and development,” the letter states. “In the same period across the UK, the usage of ebooks and electronic resources in schools in particular has flatlined and even in the last year begun to decline – it is not the case that use of books is being replaced by technology. It is the case that children are not receiving the support and encouragement they need in order to become readers.”

Pointing to the fact that England is the only OECD nation “where the literacy of 16- to 24-year-olds is below that of people aged 55 and over”, the authors say that “if a child cannot read well by the age of 11, the negative impacts on their attainment last for the rest of their lives”.

“Unless action is taken urgently to address these historically low levels of literacy, there is no way that HM Government can achieve the stated objective of delivering a future-ready ‘advanced skills’ economy. Before they can read to learn, children and young people must first learn to read, to research and successfully to navigate today’s information-rich world,” they write. “The urgent need is with us now – we must act now to counter the loss of school and college libraries before we consign a generation to a lifetime of low attainment and mobility.”

The bestselling author Matt Haig, one of the letter’s signatories, said that “the lack of support for school libraries is silly and short-sighted”.

“Children are reading and loving books as much as they ever did,” he said, “and school libraries and librarians are the perfect gatekeepers to help cultivate and sustain that early passion for books. Libraries turn a love of reading into something communal and their value is social and even psychological as well as academic. A good library is the beating heart of a school.”