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Concern after 'staggering' fall in reading for pleasure

Reading, vocabulary and phonics Literacy & English Education research
We are facing a reading for pleasure crisis after researchers uncovered a “staggering” fall in the number of children who like to read in their free time.
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New research (Clark et al, 2024) from the National Literacy Trust (NLT) reveals that only 1 in 3 children and young people aged 8 to 18 say they enjoy reading in their free time (34.6%). 

This is the lowest level recorded by the charity since it first started surveying children about their reading 19 years ago. Concerningly, this year has seen an 8.8% drop since last year’s report, a fall the NLT describes as “staggering”.

The research is based on survey findings involving more than 76,000 children and young people across the UK. Last year, this annual research found that 43.4% said they enjoy reading in their free time. This figure has now fallen to 34.6%. In 2016, it stood at 58.6%.

 

 

Staggering fall: Percentage of children and young people aged 8 to 18 who enjoyed reading in their free time either very much or quite a lot from 2005 to 2024 (source Clark et al, 2024) 

 

The study shows that boys in particular do not enjoy reading, with the gender gap tripling in the last 12 months – only 28.2% of boys now say they enjoy reading in their free time compared with 40.5% of girls.

While reading enjoyment this year has fallen across all age groups, the steepest declines are in the secondary years.  Just 30.7% of students aged 11 to 14 and 29.7% aged 14 to 16 say they enjoy reading in their free time, compared with more than half of primary pupils aged 8-11 (51.9%).

 

Worrying: Percentage of children and young people who enjoyed reading in their free time in 2024 by gender, age group and free school meal uptake (8 to 18s only) (source: Clark et al, 2024)

 

The findings do, however, contain a silver lining for schools. They show that while reading for pleasure has declined across the board, more children and young people say they enjoy reading in school than in their free time (40.5% vs 34.6%).

Furthermore, the gender gap in reading enjoyment at school is five times smaller than outside of school (2.2% vs 12.3%), with almost as many boys (39.5%) as girls (41.7%) saying they enjoy reading at school.

The NLT study shows links between reading for pleasure and students’ reading skills, aptitude for learning, wellbeing, confidence, and empathy. In particular, children and young people who enjoy reading in their free time are twice as likely to have strong reading skills than children who don’t (34.2% vs 15.7%).

The NLT is now calling for a government taskforce to be established to create an action plan to tackle the issue. It also wants to see reading for pleasure prioritised in the government’s Curriculum and Assessment Review, which is due to report next year.

For its part, the NLT has this week published a webpage featuring a range of educational resources to help support reading for pleasure approaches in schools (see below).

The NLT has this week pledged to directly support 1.5 million more disadvantaged children and young people to read for pleasure and read with confidence. This will include accelerating the growth of its Libraries for Primaries campaign which seeks to ensure every primary school in the UK has a dedicated library space by 2028.

It also intends to “expand and deepen the impact” of its existing reading for pleasure programmes in schools, including the Young Readers Programme. 

Jonathan Douglas, chief executive of the NLT, said: “To truly make reading for pleasure a national priority, we are urging the government to form a reading taskforce and action plan with multi-sector partners – amplifying our collective reach and influence, strengthening our impact and re-imagining solutions to this complex crisis.”

Commenting on the findings this week, Chris Paterson, co-CEO at the Education Endowment Foundation, said “The research paints a worrying picture of the sharp decline in young people reading for pleasure. We know that reading is one of the most important building blocks for young people to achieve their potential across many subjects in school, building their vocabulary, grammar and overall general knowledge. This goes beyond school achievement though. Good literacy levels are vital to building a successful career and engaging with the wider world.

“We can’t allow reading for pleasure to just ebb away. It’s imperative that this practice is encouraged and prioritised amongst children and educators have a huge part to play in this.”