Research published by the National Literacy Trust and involving more than 71,000 children and young people aged 8 to 18 warns that only one in three (35%) said they enjoyed writing (Clark et al, 2023).
In similar research in 2010, when the NLT first began asking this question, 46% of the responding pupils said they enjoyed writing.
Furthermore, the research shows that while 72% of pupils aged 5 to 8 say they enjoy writing, this drops to 52% for those aged 8 to 11 and then to 26% for 14 to 16-year-olds.
It comes at a time when the pandemic has hit pupils’ writing skills. In 2022, 31% of key stage 2 pupils did not reach expected levels in writing, compared to 22% in 2019.
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