The National Year of Reading should be extended into a National Decade of Reading, an Education Committee inquiry into reading for pleasure has concluded.
The committee argues that the government should also commit to a national reading guarantee that would ensure that all children have regular opportunities to enjoy reading.
The Reading for Pleasure Inquiry was launched last November in response to a sharp decline in the number of children reading for pleasure.
According to the inquiry report published on Friday, National Literary Trust CEO Jonathan Douglas told the committee that this year’s National Year of Reading should be “turned into a Decade of Reading to maintain the foundations that are being laid”.
The report said expanding the initiative would mean reading for pleasure “remains a long-term priority”, and could be used “as an opportunity to drive more far-reaching change to include reading for pleasure in all areas of education”.
Meanwhile, a National Reading Guarantee would ensure that all children, “regardless of background”, have consistent opportunities to “enjoy books, stories and shared reading experiences as part of everyday life from birth to age 18”.
Although the report suggests that the Guarantee should adopt a “broad” definition of reading, it says that children should be encouraged to engage with “traditional” books, “recognising the particular benefits that traditional books provide”. For example, Jo Taylor, Associate Professor of Language and Cognition at UCL, told the Inquiry that “the complexity of language in a graphic novel will not be the same as the complexity of language in a traditional novel”.
The cross-party committee chaired by Labor MP Helen Hayes says the Department for Education (DfE) should extend its pledge to give a library from every primary school to secondary schools. It also says the government should restore public library funding lost since 2010, and supports calls for library cards to be issued automatically at birth.
According to the report, increased screen use is a “major factor” reducing the time children spend reading for pleasure. Onyinye Iwu, a writer, illustrator and teacher, told the inquiry that when she asked students why they didn’t read, “a lot of them were like: ‘Miss, but we have TikTok. What’s the point?’ That’s it. You have TikTok, you have Netflix, you have movies coming out; Why would you read the book?”
However, the report said, “England is so far behind the international average that we cannot put the blame solely on screens.” Cost of living, modern work patterns, lack of access to library and “demand for competitive curriculum” are also important factors.
Douglas told the inquiry that boys may have particular difficulty reading because “from birth girls are more likely to be bought books as gifts and taken to the library, so the gendering of reading as an activity occurs almost unconsciously at a fairly early stage”. Fewer male teachers and a lack of male reading role models may also contribute to boys’ low reading.
According to the report, there is “little evidence” that the National Year of Reading has “impacted the core work” of the DfE in relation to schools and the early years. It says children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), particularly those with dyslexia, are a “key priority group” missing from the year-round initiative.
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It suggests that the focus of reading in the early years should be “on increasing enjoyment and engagement rather than on school preparation and the teaching of phonics”.
The report argues that last year’s curriculum review was a “missed opportunity” to create more space to develop a genuine enjoyment of reading in children, saying that there should be diversity in the GCSE English Literature curriculum: “It is unacceptable that, in 2023, only 1.5% of students had studied a text by a writer of color at GCSE, and we do not understand why the curriculum and assessment review failed to address this important issue”.
The inquiry concluded that the decline in reading for pleasure is “not inevitable”, and is the result of “policy choices, fragmented systems and unequal access”.
Isobel Hunter, chief executive of Libraries Connected, said the committee had issued a “clear call to action”, adding: “We urge the incoming Burnham government to make reading for pleasure part of its wider mission to expand opportunities and improve life chances”.
