Reading for children should prioritize enjoyment over learning, says laureate | Children

Children’s award winner Frank Cottrell-Boyce has called on the government to prioritize entertainment over children’s literacy.

Giving evidence to members of the education committee, which is investigating the problem of reading for fun among children, the photographer and author said that discussions about children’s reading often return to school.

He also said that “the business of learning to read” can prevent children from reading. “We can teach them all the ways,” he told the MP, “but the important thing is that they dance.”

The number of children reading for fun in the UK has fallen dramatically in recent years. According to the National Literacy Trust’s annual survey, only one in three children and young people aged eight to 18 like to read in their spare time – a drop of 36% since 2005.

Cottrell-Boyce said the reasons included visual disturbances, instability, Covid and poverty, including the kind of “poverty of seats” found in emergency shelters. “No child can have a problem sleeping if they don’t have a bed,” he said.

He urged the government to focus on early childhood and reading to make it fun at home and in nurseries, with the help of parents and nursery workers who may not have the confidence to read aloud to their children because of their experiences.

“Strengthening the state’s child protection laws has always freed up parents to do more work and provide more care.

Cottrell-Boyce, who is coming to the end of two years as children’s laureate, said early years workers were among the lowest paid and youngest. “In the nurseries there are workers who have just given up being children.

“In the meantime, it means that many of them have lost a lot of education because of the epidemic.”

He added that the initiative did not require a lot of money – most of the equipment was already available. He said that building the confidence of parents was very important, and emphasized the joy of “sharing” in the community.

“I think the early years are everything,” he told MPs on Tuesday. “The first years are when the cake is baked. Everything after that is icing or ganache, maybe, and candles and helium balloons. It’s all fun but the cake is what matters.”

He said he is optimistic about the future of children’s reading. I think we can fix it.

“This is what we do and everything else.” There is no parent who tells a child, ‘You should learn the rule that the man is offside that’s it I’ll play football with you’. We always put fun first. It seems simple to me that what you do is make sure it happens as early as possible. “

Also giving evidence to MPs was Rebecca Sinclair, President of the Publishers Association, who said the change was needed to restore the story to the reader, to make it “inappropriate”.

He also said that when parents read with their children, they often preferred to “read for skill” instead of having fun, and said that there was not enough time and space in school to have fun while reading.

The UK is celebrating the national year of reading, a government-led initiative supported by the National Literacy Trust to tackle the decline in the number of people reading for pleasure.