We know that Covid-19 has taken a toll on young people’s mental health: the Office for National Statistics, the Anna Freud Centre, the Co-Space Study and the University of Manchester have all recently published reports highlighting the emotional and behavioural difficulties that stem from the pandemic.

This is clearly important from a personal and emotional health perspective. But could it also affect how well children and young people are able to learn? A study on the effects of anxiety in primary school students and their parents, in relation to learning to read, suggests so.

It has long been recognised that there is more to reading comprehension than the ability to decode print and understand spoken language. Other factors, such as the ability to rapidly recall information (rapid automatic naming), motivation, ability to empathise and how you perceive yourself as a reader all play a part. In a subtler way, these factors contribute to our ability not just to pull the words from the page but to our interpretation and understanding of the text.

We know that family involvement is important. Parental engagement and interest, and the home literacy environment, are major factors in helping a child start their reading journey and maintain their motivation.

Researchers also suggest that anxiety may be a small but crucial part of the puzzle. This is particularly concerning for children who are finding it harder to learn to read.

It appears that our attempts to help can establish an unhelpful pattern of thinking, where any difficulties the child faces lead to increased anxiety levels which, in turn, make them more sensitive to difficulties and getting things wrong (Riddick et al, 1999).

Put simply, as reading becomes difficult, children become more sensitive to anything that highlights how hard it is, making them increasingly anxious. High anxiety levels lead to an inability to maintain attention because the child becomes preoccupied with how hard they are finding the task. So, rather than focus on making meaning, they read in a disjointed way, leading to a lack of understanding and more anxiety.

Research conducted by Blicher and colleagues (2017) also found an association between a mother’s level of preoccupation with the difficulties their child was having in learning to read and anxiety levels in the child. This makes sense - that preoccupied and worried parents result in anxious children, and anxious children can become preoccupied about not being able to read and find it hard to focus on the thing that will help them: reading.

We need to see education as a partnership, working with parents to help them understand and reduce their preoccupations; working with children in supportive and collaborative ways that seek to reduce their anxiety and moving every mountain to ensure all children learn to read.

Megan Dixon is director of research at Holy Catholic Family Multi-Academy Trust. With thanks to Daphne Barker at the Lancaster University Centre for Language and Literacy

This article originally appeared in the 14 May 2021 issue under the headline “How learning to read can be derailed by anxiety”