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The National Year of Reading should be added to the Decade of Literacy, an education committee investigating recreational reading has concluded.
The government should also commit to a National Reading Guarantee which will ensure that all children have the opportunity to enjoy reading, the committee says.
The Reading for Pleasure survey was launched last November in response to a a large decrease on the number of children who read for pleasure.
The head of the National Literary Trust, Jonathan Douglas, told the committee that this year’s National Year of Reading should be “turned into a decade of reading to lay the groundwork”, according to the research report, published on Friday.
Expanding the role could mean reading for pleasure “remains a long-term priority”, and could be used “as an opportunity to make significant changes to the inclusion of reading for pleasure in all areas of education”, says the report.
Meanwhile, the National Reading Guarantee will ensure that all children, “regardless of culture”, have more opportunities to “enjoy books, stories and share what they have read from birth to 18 as part of everyday life”, it adds.
Although the report suggests that the Declaration should have a “wider” definition of reading, it says that children should be encouraged to read “traditional” books, “recognizing the benefits that traditional books bring”. Jo Taylor, associate professor of linguistics and cognition at UCL, told the study that “the difficulty of language in a picture book is not the same as the difficulty of language in a traditional book”, for example.
A cross-party committee, chaired by Labor MP Helen Hayes, has called on the Department for Education (DfE) to increase a promise to provide a library in each primary school and secondary school. It also says that the government should restore public library funding that has been lost since 2010, and support it phones automatically issuing library cards at birth.
The increase in screen use is a “major factor” in reducing the amount of time children spend reading for fun, according to the report. Author, photographer and teacher Onyinye Iwu told the students that when she asked the students why they don’t read, “most of them were like: ‘Miss, but we have TikTok. That’s it. You have TikTok, you have Netflix, you have a movie coming out; why are you reading this book?’
However, “England is so far behind at international level that we cannot blame it on the viewership,” the report says. Cost of living, modern working methods, lack of library and “competitive education” are the main factors.
Mr Douglas told the study that boys in particular struggle to read because “from the time girls are born they can be bought books as gifts and taken to the library, so the gender of reading as an activity is unconsciously done at an early age”. Fewer male teachers and a lack of male reading role models may also contribute to boys’ low reading rates.
According to the report, there is “little evidence” that the National Year of Reading “has had a significant impact” on the DfE’s work in schools and early years. It adds that children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send), especially those with dyslexia, are a “very important group” that is lacking in year-round interventions.
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It suggests that reading in the early years should be “based on creating joy and taking action in preparing for school and teaching the sound of words”.
Last year review courses it was a “rare opportunity” to create more space for children to have a real joy of reading, the report says, adding that the GCSE English Literature curriculum should be diverse: “It is unacceptable that, in 2023, only 1.5% of students studied literature by a writer of color at GCSE, and we do not understand why the Curriculum Review was not possible. question”.
The study concluded that the fall in reading pleasure is inevitable, and is the result of “policy decisions, fragmented practices and unequal opportunities”.
Isobel Hunter, chief executive at Libraries Connected, said the committee had provided “a clear vision”, adding: “We are encouraging the incoming Burnham government to make reading fun part of its mission to spread access and improve quality of life”.
