Why Are Children Falling Out of Love with Reading?
- David Salariya
- May 1
- 4 min read
Reading is becoming a chore, not a joy. Why?
Two recent reports - one from the Publishers Association and another commissioned by HarperCollins - paint a sobering picture of children’s relationship with reading. And while the findings are worrying, they are, sadly, not surprising.
Fewer than half of under-fours are read to regularly. For boys, the figures drop even further. Only 32% of five-to-ten-year-olds choose to read for pleasure. More than a third of parents say they don’t enjoy reading to their children at all.
It’s easy to see how reading is being squeezed out - by time, by screens, and increasingly by a creeping sense that reading is just another form of schoolwork.
When reading becomes a grind, we all lose.
Even in the classroom, the joy of reading is eroding. Read-aloud sessions are declining. Storytime is being replaced by computerised quizzes. Accelerated Reader, a once-innovative reading incentive programme, is now arguably doing more harm than good.
Many schools won’t stock a book unless it’s been approved and scored by the Accelerated Reader programme. And publishers, in turn, often feel forced to play along if they want their books on school shelves. Yet there’s a real risk here: when a child reads for points, not pleasure, we lose the magic.
Accelerated Reader isn’t harmful - but it doesn’t reliably help either. Turning reading into a test may boost tracking, but it risks killing joy. For most children, reading needs to feel like discovery, not homework
EEF: Accelerated Reader Evaluation Report (2021)
EEF: Accelerated Reader Secondary Trial (2015)
Despite this programme’s wide adoption, robust research questioning its effectiveness is long overdue. Anecdotal evidence suggests it’s making reading feel more like a performance metric than a pathway to imagination and empathy. As soon as reading becomes associated with quizzes, data, and schoolwork - not imagination, delight, or discovery. And once a child thinks reading is just another thing to perform at school, they switch off. We shouldn’t be grinding the joy out of books in the name of measurable progress.”
Systematic Synthetic Phonics
In the UK, systematic synthetic phonics has been the mandated approach for early reading instruction since the 2006 Rose Report. This method, emphasizing the relationship between letters and sounds, is reinforced by the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check. According to the Education Endowment Foundation, phonics instruction can lead to an average of +5 months' progress in reading for young learners, particularly those aged 4–7 . However, while phonics is effective in developing decoding skills, critics argue that an overemphasis on phonics can make reading instruction feel "joyless," potentially disengaging students from reading for pleasure . Experts suggest that combining phonics with exposure to whole texts may be more effective in fostering a love for reading . Thus, while phonics is a valuable tool in early reading instruction, it's essential to balance it with other literacy activities to nurture a genuine enjoyment of reading.
Performance over pleasure: the root problem
We’re raising a generation that sees reading as assessment. Nearly one in three children says that reading is “more a subject to learn than a fun thing to do.” That should ring alarm bells.
Parents aren’t to blame. Many want to read more, but feel overwhelmed or uncertain where to start. Gen Z parents, having grown up online, may never have experienced the kind of intimate, joyful reading their own children need. That’s where health visitors and early years professionals come in - quietly powerful agents of change who can show families how ten minutes a day with a book can transform a child’s world.
Publishing must also take some responsibility
It’s tempting to blame the problem on screen time or “gift books” bought at Christmas but left unread. But there’s a deeper publishing problem too.
The market is flooded with brand-name hardbacks, nostalgia reboots, and celebrity authors - titles often designed more for adult buyers than for children. Re-printing old books and trying to pass them off as new...books created and designed forty years ago are just not suitable for children in 2025...no matter how they are "refreshed" with new fonts.
Authentic, engaging books can be drowned out by this noise.
If a child doesn’t connect with a book, they won’t read it. It’s that simple. And too often, the marketing of children’s books seems aimed more at nostalgic adults or retail gatekeepers than at children themselves.
There is hope - if we act wisely
The Turning the Page report recommends a range of systemic changes that could truly shift the dial:
Universal access to school libraries, especially in primary schools
National curriculum reform that prioritises reading for enjoyment
Support for teachers to diversify the texts they use
More inclusive publishing that reflects the lives of all children
A stronger cultural focus on reading as a daily pleasure, not a chore
These ideas are all doable. The tools exist. But they require political will, long-term commitment, and real leadership from every part of the reading ecosystem — from policymakers to publishers to parents.
We know what works - let’s use it.
Reading for pleasure shouldn’t be an afterthought or a luxury. It’s one of the single most effective things we can offer our children - for their mental wellbeing, cognitive development, empathy, and future opportunities.
We’re not short on brilliant books. But we need to be far braver — in publishing, in teaching, and in parenting - about how we get those books into the hands of the children who need them most.
There’s no shortage of brilliant books being published - but they can be drowned out by celebrity noise, marketing priorities, and a curriculum that treats reading as performance rather than pleasure. And of course, everything starts long before school. If we want to build a culture of reading, it needs to start in the home, supported by professionals like health visitors, who could play a powerful role in showing parents how simple, joyful, and vital daily reading can be. Libraries in schools with librarians in schools would make a huge difference.. We have the tools - we’re just not always using them wisely.
Let’s not turn reading into a test. Let’s turn it back into what it was always meant to be: a source of joy, connection, and imagination.
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