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  • The demise of teen reading in the UK?

    Thursday 8 September 2011

    Categories: Education, Media Influence, Teenagers

    ‘Children in the UK are significantly less likely to read for pleasure than in nations such as Kazakhstan, Albania, Indonesia and Peru according to international research’ announced The Telegraph this week. I wondered whether the nations named in the headline felt mildly offended that they had been chosen to highlight the comparison – the implication being that they are nations we assume not to be particularly literate.

    The article bemoans the fact that ‘four in 10 teenagers in this country fail to read for enjoyment outside school’, and links the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development survey with the government claims that academic demands placed on schoolchildren have been ‘too low for too long’.

    I know we are all accustomed to alarmist reporting about educational standards in this country, and any international study which appears to support the claims that schools are failing and children are ill-equipped in educational terms is always seized on by the media. They do like their rankings (following the popular league table mentality), especially when the UK appears to show up badly.

    As an English teacher for 30 years, I do not need convincing of the benefits to be derived from reading for pleasure. But, looking at the statistics cited by the newspaper, my reaction was rather different. It does not seem to acknowledge the difference between reading ‘for enjoyment’ and reading ‘daily outside school’. If four in 10 teenagers don’t read daily, for enjoyment, outside the hours which they are in school, that suggests that 60% of UK teenagers do – an impressive statistic. In addition to this, all teenagers up to 16 will be encouraged to read daily within school, as English (which has a literary component) is compulsory up to GCSE, and many schools choose to make GCSE English Literature compulsory too. Most GCSE subjects will include compelling non-fiction as part of the young people’s reading diet. So I’m not sure how this squares with the accusation of low academic demands on children, and the link between this claim and reading habits beyond the classroom.

    The young people in the survey were asked how many of them read every day outside school. I am an avid reader, but I could not say I find time to read absolutely every day, so I would join the 40% of young people who, the article suggests, ‘fail to read for enjoyment’.

    We encourage young people in schools to read critically. I hope they, and their parents and teachers, read the reporting of this OECD study carefully, and do not necessarily reach the same conclusions as the journalist and the government.

    Posted by Jill Berry

Your comments

I totaly agree with the above statement. Many parents are complaining that their children are given far too much homework and they do not encourage reading outside of school, but equate that to how much time they spend on my space, hotmail, twitter, facebook and texting. One could argue this is a form of reading, something perhaps of interest to them, but a lot of it is not written using correct grammar, in sentences or with any structure.

By Milly on Tuesday 18 October 2011

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