Experts have set out four recommendations for the government and schools to increase reading for pleasure, amid warnings that it has dropped to its lowest level for 20 years.
Speaking to MPs on the Commons Education Select Committee, the experts suggested that the problem can be tackled in these ways:
1. Give reading for pleasure a bigger ‘profile’
When asked how the government could increase the number of children reading for pleasure, Teresa Cremin, professor of literacy education at the Open University, said: “There are multiple ways that can be done, but I think [reading for pleasure] needs to be higher profile in an intentional way within the curriculum.”
Dr Jo Taylor, associate professor in the Department of Language and Cognition at UCL, said phonics is taught “very well” in primary schools, but some schools are left feeling that “they don’t have time for other aspects of language and literacy that are really important”.
2. Tackle the ‘tension’ in teacher training
Dr Helen Hendry, senior lecturer in primary education at the Open University, told the committee that trainee teachers are faced with a conflict between the need to foster a culture of reading for pleasure and the need to satisfy assessments.
“Whilst the need to teach or engender reading for pleasure is part of ITT curricula, the focus on assessment for teachers is really more around skills,” she said.
“So although they’re being directed to create a culture of reading for pleasure, there’s this kind of tension because the teacher standards actually measure specifically whether they’re ready to teach systematic, synthetic phonics.”
Dr Hendry added that initial teacher training (ITT) providers do try to embed reading for pleasure pedagogy, but student teachers can start training with a “very low knowledge base of text”.
She said she was recently involved in a study of nearly 600 student teachers across 10 providers, and that 31 per cent of trainees could not name a children’s author at the beginning of their training.
“Teacher training routes are often essentially nine months in a PGCE, so it’s very short to get all of the subject knowledge across the primary curriculum,” Dr Hendry said.
“Knowledge of children’s literature and reading for pleasure pedagogy is really hard work, but also very significant work.”
3. Create ‘playful’ interaction with texts
Dr Hendry also said that the relationship between staff and their pupils who are learning to read can have a big impact on learning.
She emphasised the importance of “playful” interaction, pointing to research showing that pupils remember and enjoy texts more if they respond to them “with their whole bodies - acting them out, moving, using gestures”.
Adults “need to monitor and respond to that engagement”, she added. “So some of it’s responding in the moment - that spontaneous reflection on practice, and noticing what the children are doing.
“But also, and this is when you move through into the early stage of primary school, noticing children’s interactions with each other, noting down what they’ve been interested in, what’s motivating them to read, and building on that.”
Dr Hendy suggested that teachers pay attention to the books that children choose to read and how they behave in response, and use that information to guide them.
Reading for pleasure “could be dramatically enhanced” if serious attention was paid to this, she said.
4. Address assessment pressures
Experts also warned the MPs that the “accountability culture” attached to assessments does not promote reading for pleasure.
Committee members asked the experts for their opinions on the reasons for the decline in children reading for pleasure in recent years.
Professor Cremin said there were various reasons, including “ubiquitous use” of technology.
But she added: “I think another particular pressure is the curriculum pressure and the backwash of assessment, where teachers feel the need to work towards the Sats. Whatever the assessment frame is in accountability cultures, that’s what teachers work to first.
“And so reading for pleasure can often be seen as a sideline - a ‘nice-to-have extra’ - rather than actually a core part of what we need to be supporting our young people to be readers and to choose to read, to develop the habit that gives them the benefit.”
The committee launched its inquiry into the decline in reading for pleasure in November, with chair Helen Hayes saying a “generational shift” had taken place.
This came after a National Literacy Trust survey last year revealed that the proportion of children who enjoyed reading was at its lowest in 20 years, with just 33 per cent of young people aged 8 to 18 saying they enjoyed it in their free time.
The Department for Education and the National Literacy Trust announced that 2026 would be the National Year of Reading, with education secretary Bridget Phillipson calling on parents to make reading with their children a daily habit.
But last week Tes revealed research showing that more than a quarter of parents have avoided reading with or to their children because they worry about their own reading ability.
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