Annual Literacy Survey

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Annual Literacy Survey

Now in its fifteenth year, the National Literacy Trust’s Annual Literacy Survey (ALS) explores children and young people’s literacy behaviours, attitudes and enjoyment.

Be Part of the 2025 Annual Literacy Survey—Sign up here

We started asking children and young people aged 5 to 18 about their literacy attitudes, behaviour, and confidence in 2005, and by 2010, the online survey had become an annual occurrence conducted in hundreds of schools and settings across the UK.

Proving a comprehensive literacy survey, its findings provide a vital and consistent national measure of children’s literacy, allowing us to track annual trends in reading, writing, speaking and listening. This data also provides an essential evidence base which underpins our organisation’s strategy and informs all of the National Literacy Trust’s programmatic work, wider research and policy approaches.

Since we started publishing reports on the Annual Literacy Survey, we have seen increasing recognition of the importance of reading for pleasure in policymaking and pedagogy, with regular citation of our findings in government guidance as well as inclusion within inspection frameworks. Our reports also receive attention in the media and help to start national conversations. Most recently, Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson MP wrote a column in the The Sunday Telegraph which called on families to encourage children to pick up a book at Christmas, citing our latest research on reading for pleasure and stating: “I’m deeply concerned about this collapse in the number of children reading for pleasure – and I’m determined to turn it around. It’s too important to ignore.”

With over 14 annual surveys under our belt, and 2024’s survey providing our largest bank of data so far (an incredible 76,131 children and young people aged 5 to 18 took part), we are ready to look ahead to 2025 to discover what the reading, writing, speaking and listening trends and data reveal.

Would you like to know what your pupils think about reading, writing, speaking and listening?

Registration for the 2025 Annual Literacy Survey is now open

Be Part of the 2025 Annual Literacy Survey—Sign up here

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How to take part in the 2025 Annual Literacy Survey

You and your school can be part of this significant literacy survey and help to showcase the literacy landscape in 2025. Register to take part and choose from multiple surveys to complete:

5 to 8-year-old survey
8 to 16-year-old
16 to 18-year-old survey
Staff survey

Practical information

You have until 28 February 2025 to register, and then until 7 March 2025 to submit your completed surveys.
None of the surveys should take longer than 45 minutes to complete.
The surveys are open to schools across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales.
They are all online surveys and completely free to take part in.
Only one member of staff needs to sign up on behalf of your school, including for the surveys for pupils.
You can decide who and how many pupils you would like to survey, but the more pupils you survey, the more representative your school's individual report will be.

What your school will receive

Participating schools will receive a personalised school-specific report outlining their findings, which they can compare nationally once the national reports are published.

“These reports will help to provide useful context on our students’ attitudes to literacy.”

Many schools use their report to support their planning, CPD and the student voice. Over the years we have heard from teachers who extol the value of the survey and subsequent personalised reports:

“Our school wide CPD programme this year is examining literacy. These reports will help to provide useful context on our students’ attitudes to literacy as well as their own literacy practices. It has also drawn attention to the fact that we need to look more closely at our provision for education around AI.”