Last week, the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, launched 2026 as the ‘National Year of Reading’.
It comes at a time when, reportedly, the love of reading amongst children has reached its lowest ever level – figures put the proportion of children who enjoy reading in their free time as being as low as 30%.
The Year of Reading is part of the government’s mission to break the link between a child’s background and what they go on to achieve in life: we have to ensure that every child gets the best possible start in life. The links between reading and confidence, social, academic, educational and personal success and wellbeing – and future earnings – are very well established.
Reading for pleasure has the biggest positive impact of any factor on children’s life chances. There is nothing more important.
There will be a number of initiatives to help encourage and support the love of reading throughout the year. Extra resources will be made available in schools and libraries, and the government are working with reading and literacy charities to create a sea change in the way that children think about reading. Businesses have a key role to play as they benefit massively from having an informed and emotionally intelligent workforce.
I will come back to this again as the plans firm up, but I was reminded of my visit last year to the amazing charity Read for Good, based in Nailsworth, but working nationally. Since then I have spent a lot of time in schools, talking to teachers as well as parents, and, of course, children themselves.
While I’m no expert, these seem to me to be some of the things that we can do to help:
- Model the behaviours we want to see. In other words, make sure children see you reading.
- Give children choice. Don’t judge what they choose to read.
- Don’t stress about it – reading is for pleasure.
- Read to your children/grandchildren every night.
- Talk about books and reading at home
- Visit the library – the choice available is amazing – and it’s free!
And if there’s one thing that’s more important than anything else – it’s reading to children every day. Apart from anything else, you’ll love it every bit as much as them.
