Everyone agrees it’s hugely important. Yet, by common consent, getting children to read for pleasure is something we all to a degree neglect and undervalue. Why is this?
Speaking at the 2014 Hay Festival recently Michael Rosen, the former Children’s Laureate, addressed the question like this: “We’re talking about reading for pleasure, but what an odd thing to have to campaign for."
“It’s kind of like saying, ‘Let’s campaign for air, or for nice soup’. You read, you have a good time. That should be the end of it.”
The problem, says Rosen, is that the practice of reading for pleasure is being lost in schools because of the Government’s fixation on phonics, spelling and grammar.
Rosen is not the only prominent children’s author to lay the blame at the Government’s door. Michael Morpurgo, another former Children’s Laureate, has also warned of the damaging impact of Department for Education prescription on children’s reading.
Writing in the Guardian in 2012, the author of War Horse said too many children were being failed when it comes to enjoyment of reading.
One way to overcome this, he said, would be to ensure enjoyment of literature takes precedence over learning the rules of literacy, especially in the early years.
“Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise,” he added.
This view is almost universally endorsed by classroom practitioners. In a recent ReadingWise survey of over 500 literacy co-ordinators, 98% said ‘emphasising reading for pleasure’ was important or very important.
What’s more, they placed a far higher priority on reading for enjoyment than synthetic phonics. The Government favourite strategy was ranked only fourth in order of importance (with 79%), behind ‘giving children a wide range of texts’ (92%) and ‘introducing children to challenging texts’ (89%).
Rosen and Morpurgo have played a leading role over many years in campaigning against excessive government prescription in literacy teaching which they believe is stifling creativity and risks putting many children off reading for life.
Both have put forward ideas on instilling a love of reading through daily reading sessions, children’s book clubs, investment in school libraries and regular visits from story-tellers, theatre groups and poets. A good example is Rosen’s 20-point plan for schools to encourage reading for pleasure.
Yet despite the almost universal view about the importance of reading for pleasure, it continues to be given a lower priority to other issues seen as more pressing by schools. The reason for this is made clear in the latest annual report from Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools and head of Ofsted.
“Pupils don’t receive enough encouragement to read for pleasure. Time needs to be set aside in lessons for the reading, sharing, recommending and discussion of texts. Schools can be distracted by national tests and examinations, which do not always assess pupils’ wider reading skills well.”
The urgent need to increase the focus on reading for pleasure is underlined by academic evidence which shows that children who enjoy picking up a good book do better at school than their peers.
A major study from the Institute of Education in London last year reported that children who read books often and go to the library regularly made more progress in maths, vocabulary and spelling between the ages of 10 and 16 than those who rarely read.
Reading for pleasure had the strongest effect on children’s vocabulary development, but the impact on spelling and maths was still significant, said the report’s co-author Dr Caroline Sullivan.
“It may seem surprising that reading for pleasure would help to improve children’s maths scores. But it is likely that strong reading ability will enable children to absorb and understand new information and affect their attainment in all subjects.” she added.
The message is clear. If we are to create world-class levels of literacy in our schools we need to be able to make reading an enjoyable experience for all children.
The good news is that despite the Government’s heavy emphasis on phonics, spelling and grammar, children’s enjoyment of reading is actually on the rise.
The latest annual survey by the National Literacy Trust reports that, in 2013, 53% of young people between the ages of eight and 16 enjoyed reading ‘very much’ or ‘quite a lot’. This surpasses the previous record level of reading enjoyment (51%) recorded in 2005.
There is still a long way to go to make reading a compelling experience for all children. But it is well worth the effort and should be a top priority leading up to and beyond the 2015 general election.
Next week: Start the formal teaching of reading later – Strategy No 8 in our series explores further the debate about reading for enjoyment and when is the best time for children to begin the formal process of learning to read
