This report by the Literacy Trust surveyed children and young people aged 5 to 18 in early 2022. It includes findings on reading enjoyment, confidence, frequency and attitudes and explores responses by age, gender, socio-economic background and geographical region.
The research showed that reading enjoyment reached a 15-year-low in early 2020, before increasing to its second highest point since we started asking this question in the first lockdown in spring 2020.
However, this report shows that any gains made during the early part of the pandemic had completely eroded by 2022. This was particularly true for children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and for boys within this group.
The report says that much more must be done to support children and young people with the lowest levels of reading enjoyment, recognising the role that families, schools and the wider community have to play in ensuring this downward trend does not extend into future years.
Specifically, the study shows that educational disruption in relation to the pandemic had a particularly detrimental effect on children from lower-income homes. At the same time, the government has set ambitious targets for increasing the percentage of children leaving primary schools reading at the level expected of their age.