The lowest levels of reading enjoyment and daily reading “in a generation” represent “a critical challenge for literacy and life chances” it has been warned this week.
Annual research from the National Literacy Trust, published on Wednesday (June 11), reveals that only 32.7% of students aged 8 to 18 say they enjoy reading (Clark et al, 2025).
This is a slight fall on last year (of 1.9%) and continues a much longer decline in reading enjoyment amoung young people – we have seen a 36% fall since 2005.
Over the last year, the decline has been “especially steep” among primary-aged children and boys, with boys aged 11 to 16 seeing the sharpest drop in reading enjoyment, the report states.
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