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We’ve carried out a survey of secondary school pupils on their reading habits in partnership with Save My ExamsSome 55% of UK learners told us they were reading less for enjoyment since starting secondary schoolNearly two-thirds didn’t feel supported enough at school to improve their reading skillsA former teacher and education expert says teachers are sometimes constrained by the current curriculumThe Government says literacy is a big focus for it at the moment, and plans to make next year a national ‘Year of Reading’ UK secondary school pupils say they don’t feel supported enough at school to improve their reading skills, and one expert believes their enjoyment is taking a knock as a result. Working with online revision platform Save My Exams, we’ve surveyed nearly 1,900 secondary school pupils from across the UK – who are currently in Years 7 to 11 – to get a better understanding of their reading habits. We’ve also asked how they’re finding their English language and literature classes at school, to explore what kind of connection it might have with how much they’re reading outside of it. It comes as the Department for Education (DfE) has this month confirmed that learners in England will soon have to sit a mandatory reading test in Year 8 – when they’re about 13 – to drive up reading standards. Rather than being something they have to study for, it will aim to identify those who need extra support before they start their GCSEs and slip through the cracks. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said that too many young people were currently held back by an inability to read. “Because before a child can even begin to engage in everything their school has to offer, they must first be able to read. When they can’t, the sense of dejection sets in. Engagement seeps away. Attendance follows,” she continued. “Reading holds the key to so much. There is no foundation more important.” Here’s what we found in our survey – and what it all could mean for efforts to improve young people’s reading abilities: Pupils ‘need more support’ from their schools To start on a positive note, nearly three in five (57%) pupils say they have read a book for fun in the last 12 months. Just under a quarter (24%) will only read outside of class for school or homework, while about a fifth (18%) said they didn’t like to read for fun at all. But when faced with free time, only about one in six (15%) would actually choose to read over a range of other hobbies. In the lead were sports (26%); watching TV or streaming platforms (23%); and browsing social media (16%) – although reading did beat out gaming (12%) and out-of-school clubs and activities (8%). Concerningly, over half (55%) of the pupils polled said they read less for enjoyment since starting secondary school. It wasn’t all bad news though, with just over a quarter (27%) reading more, while about one in five (18%) hadn’t changed their reading habits much since their primary school days. When it came to how young learners were finding their English classes, there was a fairly even three-way split. About 35% found them easier than other subjects, while 33% found them harder – and 32% said they were just as challenging. There did appear to be an appetite amongst the UK’s secondary school pupils for improving their actual reading abilities. But almost two in five (38%) said that although they were getting some support from their schools or teachers, it wasn’t enough to help them strengthen their skills. An extra 14% didn’t feel supported at all to improve, while 10% said they were instead turning more to AI tools like Chat GPT to help. In contrast, about 37% said that they did receive consistent support and helpful feedback on their reading. This is particularly important when looking at their success at school. This year, the proportion of learners who passed their compulsory English GCSE fell to 59.7%, down from 61.6% in 2024, which itself was down from 64.2% in 2023, education publisher Tes reports. Learners must achieve at least a 4 in English and maths or they have to resit their exams – a policy which has been flagged as potentially problematic in the ongoing national curriculum review, with exam board OCR saying the proportion of English resit entries has reached an “all-time high”. Schools ‘constrained by curriculum’ Lucy Kirkham, Save My Exams’ head of content creation and a former teacher, told us that ideally, all young people would be reading for enjoyment. But the responses made it clear that not everyone was feeling supported at school to improve their reading skills. “The more you do something, particularly reading, the better you're going to get at it. So the encouragement and the support that students get from school is going to have a massive impact,” she said. “If they're encouraged and supported, they're going to start to feel better at it, their skills are going to improve, their literacy levels will improve, and therefore they'll probably start to read more.” She believed that the Government’s upcoming national curriculum review – due to be published in the very near future – could hold some of the answers. “I think often we see students at school doing things that they don't enjoy,” Ms Kirkham added. “As an ex-maths teacher, I know that for sure. “There's such a range of types of literacy out there… from graphic novels to online texts, finding something that a student enjoys and engages with should be really easy,” she continued. “But because of the narrowing down of the curriculum and the ability for teachers to be able to teach a range of texts, that has reduced the amount of options that students have got, which has then reduced their enjoyment and engagement in the subject.” Ms Kirkham said that allowing pupils to look at a greater number of more diverse texts, or even to be able to have some choice in what they want to study, could be “a really easy and quick way to increase engagement”. In our survey, a majority of pupils (59%) said that they would like the English literature curriculum to include more books – saying that it improved their academic performance and helped them learn about new cultures and ideas. But of course, building a culture of reading wasn’t just down to schools. There were steps parents could take, too, from making sure their child is regularly taking some time away from phones and screens, to simply encouraging them to find and explore things that they enjoy. “Thinking of a topic that you're really, really interested in, there will be so many books about that in so many different ways, reading levels and different styles,” Ms Kirkham said. She also encouraged parents to just have books “lying around” at home – so that children could let their natural curiosity kick in. A ‘National Year of Reading’ A similar decline in young people reading has been noted in The National Literacy Trust’s Annual Literacy Survey, which this year found that there had been a whopping 36% decrease in young people aged 8 to 18 who said that they enjoyed reading since 2005. There had been a particularly steep drop for secondary school-aged boys in recent years. The Department of Education has confirmed that reading is a big area of focus for them, as well as helping schools to better support struggling students. A spokesperson told us: “English and reading are essential for life, learning and work and we want all young people to have a strong foundation in English to help them achieve and thrive as part of our Plan for Change. “This is why we will launch a National Year of Reading next year and have invested £27.7 million to support the teaching of reading and writing, with a focus on pupils making the slowest progress including in secondary school,” they continued. As well as the new Year 8 reading test, other Government-backed initiatives to boost literacy skills include its ongoing English Hubs programme, new training for teachers in secondary school to support young people to read, and a £1 million fund to support schools with the greatest need to buy special programmes and other resources – to support struggling readers. The national curriculum review would help too, the spokesperson added. “Our independent, expert-led curriculum and assessment review, which has been looking at all subjects in the curriculum as well as GCSEs, will also make sure all pupils benefit from a curriculum that delivers excellent foundations in reading, writing and maths, and ensures they leave school ready for work and ready for life.” Want to learn more about how young people did in their GCSEs this year? Here’s England’s best performing counties for top grades - and here’s how private and state schools compared.
