Professor Cathie Wallace (IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education & Society) argues in The Conversation that part of the reason why so many children do not experience joy in reading is the excessive focus on synthetic phonics in early education.
Government data has shown that in 2022-23, 30% of five-year-olds in England were not meeting the expected standard for literacy at the end of their reception year at school. Literacy was the area of learning in which the lowest proportion of children reached the target level.
Now, recent research from think tank Pro Bono Economics has found that this lack of early reading skills could result in a £830 million cost to the economy for each year group over their lifetimes.
A 2023 report from the National Literacy Trust found that less than half of children aged eight to 18 say they enjoy reading. Enjoyment is at its lowest level since 2005. Part of learning to read should be learning to love books – and enjoyment in reading is linked to higher achievement. If children don’t like reading, how we teach it to them isn’t working.
