The National Literacy Trust's Annual Literacy Survey is published today - and it's a heartbreaking read. 2024 stands out for all the wrong reasons when it comes to children and young people’s reading:

- Only 1 in 3 children and young people said that they enjoyed reading in their free time.

- Only 1 in 5 said that they read something daily in their free time.

The 2023 survey talked about reading having hit a crisis point when levels were far less stark than they are now. Now we are in a national emergency when it comes to this analysis of over 76,000 responses by children and young people.

This year's survey highlights that just 1 in 3 (34.6%) children and young people aged 8 to 18 said that they enjoyed reading in their free time. This is by far the lowest level of reading enjoyment recorded since the Literacy Trust began measuring this metric in 2005.

It is also the steepest year-on-year drop recorded, with an 8.8-percentage-point decline in reading enjoyment compared with 2023, and part of a broad downward trend since 2016 when almost 2 in 3 children and young people said they enjoyed reading.

Reading frequency

Reading frequency is similarly at a historic low, with only 1 in 5 (20.5%) children and young people aged 8 to 18 sharing that they read something daily in their free time. Again, what is particularly noticeable is the extent of the decline, a drop of 7.5 percentage points from last year equating to the second steepest drop on record.

Boys v girls

Within these shocking statistics, three observations particularly stand out. The first of those is the plight of boys. The gender gap in reading enjoyment nearly tripled from a 4.8-percentage-point difference in 2023 to a 12.3-percentage-point difference in 2024, largely because of a greater drop of reading enjoyment in boys.

When it comes to reading frequency, the gender gap remained largely consistent with previous years, but just 17.5% of boys reading daily is by far the lowest we have recorded.

Crisis in teenagers

Secondly, analysis by age group shows that this is a particular crisis for secondary school pupils.

For instance, while for 8- to 11-year-olds, the proportion of children who said they enjoyed reading in their free time dropped from 56.2% in 2023 to 51.9% in 2024, for 11- to 14-year-olds the drop was over twice as much: from 40.4% to 30.7%. With daily reading levels, those aged 14 to 16 saw a particularly sharp drop of 10.9 percentage points.

Children with disadvantage

Thirdly, we are also seeing a narrowing of the free school meal (FSM) gap. Unfortunately, rather than a levelling up, we are witnessing a levelling down, with the drop in reading enjoyment and reading frequency being more pronounced for those who don’t receive free school meals.

Green shoots

Reading frequency and reading enjoyment are undoubtedly linked. For those aged 8 to 18, over eight times as many young people who enjoyed reading in their free time also said that they read daily in their free compared with those who didn’t enjoy reading. It seems that encouraging a child time to enjoy reading will also encourage them to read more frequently and vice versa.

Secondly, school can clearly have an impact. Although this report primarily looks at reading enjoyment and frequency in free time, the Annual Literacy Survey also asks about reading in school.

This highlights that slightly more children and young people said that they enjoyed reading at school compared with at home.

Thirdly, there is a demonstrable connection between reading skill and positive reading attitudes and behaviours. Using a subset of schools who agreed to share their participating pupils’ reading-skill data, we can see that children and young people who enjoyed reading had higher average (mean) standardised reading scores than those who didn’t enjoy reading. The same was true when looking at daily reading.

The benefits of reading for pleasure for our children

Children and young people who read in their free time at least once a month said it helps them to relax (56.6%) and feel happy (41%), learn new things (50.9%), understand the views of others (32.8%), learn about other cultures (32.4%) and be confident (26.0%). 

Indeed, twice as many children and young people who enjoy reading in their free time have above average reading skills than children who don't enjoy it (34.2% vs 15.7%).

The benefits of reading for pleasure for the UK economy

Previous research by WPI Strategy for the National Literacy Trust and British Land also outlined the benefits of reading for pleasure for the UK economy. It found that, if all school-aged children in the UK read for pleasure every day, the number getting five good GCSEs by the age of 16 could increase by 1.1 million within 30 years, boosting their average lifetime earning potential by £57,500 and adding £4.6 billion to the UK's GDP each year [7].

Reading taskforce

Given the broad educational and socio economic factors known to influence children and young people's enjoyment of reading, the National Literacy Trust is calling on the government to urgently form a reading taskforce and action plan with multi-sector partners to address declining rates of reading enjoyment and, in its curriculum and assessment review, prioritise reading for pleasure alongside the skills that are vital in the development of confident, motivated readers. We wholeheartedly support this at LoveReading4Kids and LoveReading4Schools. LoveReading exists because reading matters, and books change lives. 

It’s well-documented that reading for pleasure, and improving reading standards, has a huge impact on children’s wellbeing, academic achievements, and future success. And so every day our editorial team of book lovers read, review and shout about great books delivering a steady stream of brilliant reading recommendations for everyone. So that every child falls in love with books. So that every child becomes a reader. And we create readers for life.

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