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Children and Young People's Reading

The authors of this Section were Christina Clark (Director of Research) and Irene Picton (Research Manager) at the National Literacy Trust.

We have asked children and young people about their reading habits since 2005. While children and young people’s reading enjoyment and behaviour over this time has ebbed and flowed, last year stood out – for the wrong reasons. Just 2 in 5 (43.4%) of the 64,066 8- to 18-year-olds who took part in our Annual Literacy Survey told us that they enjoyed reading in their free time. This is the lowest level of reading enjoyment we have recorded since 2005.

When we started asking about reading enjoyment in 2005, 1 in 2 told us that they enjoyed reading in their free time. This remained true until 2016, when reading enjoyment peaked, with nearly 3 in 5 telling us that they enjoyed reading in their free time. However, levels had dropped to a (then) all-time low by 2020, when we recorded the then-lowest level of reading enjoyment since we began surveying children and young people aged 8 to 18 in 2005. This coincided with the period just before the first national lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Enjoyment levels rose somewhat unexpectedly during this first period of lockdowns but, by 2022, had dropped back to the pre-lockdown low of early 2020. However, as mentioned above, the last year set a new record low for this age group. Figure 6 shows the variability of reading enjoyment levels of those aged 8 to 18 from 2005 – 2023.

A large part of the reason for the drop this year is that fewer of the children and young people who have traditionally enjoyed reading, such as girls and those aged 8 to 11, said that they enjoyed it. For example, while more girls (45.3%) than boys (40.5%) told us in 2023 that they enjoyed reading, the gender gap in reading enjoyment has halved for those aged 8 to 18 over the past 18 years, decreasing from a 10.7-percentage-point difference in favour of girls in 2005 to a 4.8 percentage-point difference in 2023, still in favour of girls. However, this drop is largely because of a greater drop in reading enjoyment in girls than in boys, mirroring findings seen more globally.

Similarly, while more of those aged 8 – 11 told us that they enjoyed reading in their free time compared with their older peers this year, the number of children in this age group who said they enjoyed reading has decreased by 11.3 percentage points over the past 18 years. This is in contrast to a more stable percentage of young people aged 11 to 14 who said the same over this period. At the same time, the number of young people aged 14 to 16 who said they enjoy reading in their free time has increased over the past 18 years, rising from 32% in 2005 to 40.8% in 2023.

Slightly fewer children who received free school meals (FSMs) said they enjoyed reading in their free time compared with those who didn’t receive FSMs (39.5% vs. 43.8%). Since 2005, the gap in reading enjoyment between FSM and non-FSM children and young people has persisted, increasing marginally from a 3.7-percentage-point gap in 2005 to a 4.3 percentage-point difference this year. Boys who received FSMs had the lowest levels of reading enjoyment (38.4%), followed by girls who received FSMs (39.9%). However, levels of reading enjoyment dropped more for girls, regardless of whether they received FSMs or not.

Enjoying Reading at School

We also included a question to see how children and young people’s reading enjoyment in their free time compared with the reading they did at school. Figure 7 shows that roughly the same percentage of children and young people aged 8 to 18 said that they enjoyed reading ‘very much’ or ‘quite a lot’ in their free time (43.4%) as said that they enjoyed reading during school time (44.6%). However, a slightly larger percentage of children and young people said that they didn’t enjoy reading in school compared with reading at home. Both types of reading enjoyment were strongly positively correlated (r = .626), indicating that those who enjoyed reading at school also enjoyed reading in their free time.

As with enjoying reading in their free time, more girls than boys, more younger children than older young people and more children and young people who didn’t receive FSMs than those who did said that they enjoyed reading at school. However, the differences between the groups were much more suppressed in relation to reading enjoyment at school. For example, while the gender difference in reading enjoyment in free time stood at 4.8 percentage points in 2023, the gender difference in reading enjoyment at school was only 2.8 percentage points. This is largely because more boys told us that they enjoyed reading at school than they did in their free time, while the percentages for girls were nearly identical.

Similarly, the differences between those who received FSMs and those who didn’t were much smaller for reading enjoyment at school compared with that of reading enjoyment in free time (2.4 percentage points vs. 4.3 percentage points). This is mainly because more children and young people who received FSMs told us that they enjoyed reading at school rather than reading at home, while the percentages for those who didn’t receive FSMs were nearly identical.

By contrast, age differences increased when we looked at reading enjoyment at school. While the difference in reading enjoyment in free time between those aged 8 – 11 and those aged 14 – 16 was 15.4 percentage points, this doubled to a 32.2 percentage-point difference when looking at reading enjoyment at school between those age groups. This is because more children aged 8 to 11 enjoyed reading at school compared with reading in their free time, while fewer of those aged 14 to 16 said the same.

Reading Frequency

Daily reading levels were also a cause for concern. Fewer than 3 in 10 (28%) children and young people aged 8 – 18 said that they read something in their free time daily. As Figure 8 shows, while this year’s levels were identical to those seen in the previous year, overall, the percentage of children and young people who read daily in their free time has decreased from 38% in 2005 to 28% in 2023.

There were also differences in reading frequency by gender, age and whether or not children and young people received FSMs. Overall, more girls than boys said they read in their free time daily (30.4% vs 24.9%). However, the gender gap in daily reading has largely remained the same over the past 18 years, only marginally decreasing from a 7-percentage-point gap in 2005 to a 5.5-percentage-point difference in 2023.

Fewer children aged 8 to 11 said this year that they read daily compared with 2005 (36.9% vs 40.5%), while (mirroring trends in reading enjoyment noted above) the percentage of those aged 11 to 14 who read daily has remained largely unchanged over that period (25.8% vs. 26.1%). At the same time, the number of young people aged 14 to 16 who read daily in their free time increased slightly over the past 18 years, rising from 21.4% in 2005 to 25.7% in 2023.

Fewer children who received FSMs read daily compared with those who didn’t receive FSMs (24.1% vs. 28.8%). However, the FSM gap in daily reading has halved over the past 18 years, decreasing from an 8-percentage-point gap in 2005 to a 4.7-percentage-point difference in 2023. This is largely because of a bigger drop in daily reading levels for those from a non-FSM (10.2 percentage points) than an FSM background (6.9 percentage points) over this time period.

Overall, boys who received FSMs had the lowest levels of daily reading in 2023 (21.5%). However, daily reading levels improved for boys, regardless of whether they received FSMs or not, between 2022 and 2023, while those for girls dropped regardless of whether they received FSMs or not.

Engagement with Audiobooks

We have also been tracking children and young people’s engagement with audiobooks and podcasts since 2020, and this year, 2 in 5 (39.4%) children and young people aged 8 to 18 told us that they enjoyed listening to audio. This was a slight increase from 2022 (37.5%) but still lower than levels we found in 2021 (43.8%). Our data seem to suggest that listening to audio can level out the gender differences we often see in other aspects of literacy. For example, as shown above, more girls than boys enjoyed reading, while the gender difference in listening enjoyment is much less pronounced (boys: 40.6% vs girls: 37.8%).

Listening to audio is also a way into reading for many children and young people, with 3 in 10 (30.6%) telling us that listening to an audiobook or podcast got them interested in reading books on paper and on screen. Indeed, of those who said that they enjoyed listening:

  • 46.5% said it helped them understand a subject.
  • 45.8% said it helped them relax.
  • 44.8% said they used their imagination more than when they watch videos.
  • 35.5% said it made them want to talk about a subject.
  • 22.7% said they enjoyed listening to accents that sounded like their own.

Open-ended comments suggest that other benefits included expanded horizons and improved empathy, as well as offering access to stories when books are prohibitively expensive or difficult.

Discussion

With England’s 10- and 15-year-olds performing well on the global stage, the results of recent international reading assessments such as PIRLS and PISA suggest some cause for celebration (Lindorff et al., 2024; Ingram et al., 2023), although Scotland has not participated in PISA . At the same time, while ambitious targets have been set for increasing the percentage of children reaching the level expected in Key Stage 2 SATs, national tests have shown a slight decrease in the percentage achieving this in this year; indeed, reading was the only subject in which a lower percentage of children reached the expected level compared with the year before (https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/key-stage-2-attainment – Department for Education, 2023).

Declining reading enjoyment across a growing number of children and young people must act as a wake-up call for all who support children and young people’s reading for pleasure and the many benefits it can bring. The recent publication of a revised Reading Framework aimed at primary and secondary schools in England offers some measure of hope. The importance of reading for pleasure is foregrounded in a detailed section devoted to developing a reading-for-pleasure culture, and throughout the document, there is reference to the supportive conditions and drivers of volitional reading. However, the gulf between the aims and objectives of the Reading Framework and the findings of this report further underscore the critical importance of urgent action to address these low and declining levels of reading enjoyment.

References

Ingram, J., Stiff, J., Cadwallader, S., Lee, G., & Kayton, H. (2023). PISA 2022: National Report for England: Research report. London: Department for Education.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/656dc3321104cf0013fa742f/PISA_2022_England_National_Report.pdf.

Lindorff, A., Stiff, J., & Kayton, H. (2024). PIRLS 2021: National Report for England: Research Report. London: Department for Education.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/661667a756df202ca4ac0538/PIRLS_2021_national_report_for_england.pdf.

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