Children and young people’s enjoyment of reading and daily reading habits have risen for the first time in five years, having reached a 20-year low in 2025, according to our latest research. Still, children’s reading engagement levels remain concerningly low.
The findings are published during the National Year of Reading 2026 – the biggest campaign in a generation designed to inspire everyone to discover the joy of reading and embed it into everyday life, supported by 800 cross-sector partners and 3,000 libraries.
What did we find?
Between January – March 2026, we surveyed 125,375 children and young people aged 5 to 18 from across the UK about their reading attitudes and habits, revealing that:
- More than a third (36.1%) of those aged 8 to 18 say they enjoy reading in their free time (vs 32.7% in 2025);
- While a fifth (20.3%) read daily in their free time (vs 18.7% in 2025).
Despite this rise, reading enjoyment and daily reading levels still lag significantly behind those of a decade ago.
Widening gaps
The disadvantage gap in reading enjoyment more than doubled in the past year, with enjoyment levels for those not in receipt of free school meals increasing more than their peers in receipt of free school meals. The daily reading gap also widened over this time.
Meanwhile, children aged 5-8 were the only group to report a year-on-year decline in their reading enjoyment (from 62.6% to 61.6%). This was driven by a simultaneous fall in boys’ enjoyment of reading and rise for girls. The reading enjoyment gender gap for this age group widened, as did the daily reading gap.
The importance of relevance and encouragement
Our report found that when children and young people enjoy reading, they read more often, with benefits for learning, wellbeing and empathy.
While the relationship between reading enjoyment and daily reading is important, it is not absolute. For reading to become more strongly embedded in children and young people’s daily lives, it must also be relevant, meaningful and supported by people around them.
- Nearly half (48.7%) of children and young people said reading helps them explore their interests – particularly for groups who are the least engaged with reading; and
- Two-thirds (65.8%) are encouraged to read by their teachers and more than half (54.8%) by their parents.
Stories are gateways that allow your imagination to take flight through time and space. Through them, it is possible to escape your surroundings in a myriad of different ways, to connect with people and cultures you may otherwise never encounter in your day to day, to envision a future for yourself that your current circumstances or environment might not point towards.
Dapo Adeola, children's author and illustrator
The importance of redefining reading as relevant, meaningful and social is central to the National Year of Reading’s ‘Go All In’ campaign – for which the unifying call to action is building inclusive reading cultures that recognise the reality of children’s reading lives, support diverse routes into reading and help create sustained reading habits that benefit all young people.
It also sits at the heart of our work in schools and communities, which is empowering more children and young people to read for enjoyment and develop greater confidence as readers.
What is working
To build on this momentum beyond 2026, we must continue to invest in what we know works - championing reading for enjoyment in our homes, schools and communities, and supporting more young people to see reading as a relevant, meaningful and fun part of everyday life.
Jonathan Douglas CBE, our Chief Executive
We target our work in the nation’s most deprived wards, where low literacy and poverty are having the most serious impact on people’s lives.
In these high priority areas, where we work most intensively with schools and community partners, children and young people’s reading skills and engagement have significantly improved.
A recent evaluation of our Connecting Stories programme, funded by Arts Council England, found that in primary schools in our high priority areas in England, children are:
- 15% more likely to enjoy reading in their free time
- 23% more likely to visit their public library
- Closing the attainment gap with their national peers – between 2023-2025, the reading skills of 11-year-olds rose three times faster in high priority schools (from 66% to 73%) compared to nationally in England (from 73% to 75%).
Meanwhile, in schools that participated in our evidence-based reading programmes over the last academic year - including the Young Readers Programme and Libraries for Primaries - children and young people who were the least engaged with reading at the start saw improvements in their:
- Reading confidence (84%)
- Enjoyment of reading (77%)
- Daily reading habits (66%)
How we sustain this upturn for future generations
As the National Year of Reading campaign reaches its half-way point, and against a backdrop of multiple government commitments to support children and young people’s reading, we are calling for national leadership, sustained cross-sector partnerships and long-term investment to maintain this year’s upturn so every child can thrive.
For the first time in five years, more children are saying they’re enjoying reading, and that genuinely fills me with hope. When reading feels relevant and role models get involved, children develop a passion with benefits that go far beyond the classroom – but with progress slower for poorer children, we must make sure every child can find a form of reading that speaks to them.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson
The Education Select Committee is currently undertaking an inquiry into reading for pleasure to better understand its benefits, why fewer children and young people are enjoying reading than two decades ago and what can be done to reverse this trend. We have provided written and oral evidence and facilitated discussions between the Committee and children and teachers we work with.
While my Committee considers what action the government should take to tackle this dangerous trend, research like this helps to make the case for a concerted effort to put reading for pleasure at the top of the agenda.
Helen Hayes MP, Chair of the Education Select Committee