Research: Children's Literacy
- Dec 14, 2023
- 18 min read
Updated: Jun 30, 2024
For my Community Action project, I will be researching into a variety of topics surrounding children's literacy from researching about The National Literacy Trust and The Reading Agency Charities and the work they do in the UK to looking into how book poverty and the 'literature crisis' is effecting young people both in the UK and then into learning poverty around the world. Along the way, I'll also be researching into charities and organisation who support areas and/or countries around the world with literacy and education and what their supports does.
My hope for the 'practical' element is to get involved in the summer reading challenge at my local library to help encourage young people in my community to read, and hopefully signing up some of my Rainbows and Brownies.
For my 'inspire' section, I would like to run a session with local Girlguiding groups and possibly set up a project for them to get involved in a community action project too, such as a book donation drive.
Research
About the National Literacy Trust
The National Literacy Trust is a charity based in the UK who works with schools, communities and businesses around the county. It was founded in 1993 and works to support young people and adults to improve their literacy levels through reading and writing schools. They believe that literacy skills can help guide you through life, including being able to shape your future, through passing exams and getting jobs.
Quoted directly from the National Literacy Trust website:
Literacy is essential. Without literacy, it’s hard to live the life you want. From your earliest years, literacy skills help you develop and communicate. But when you have a tough start in life, it’s easy to fall behind. At school, reading, writing, speaking and listening are vital for success. If you find these things hard, then you struggle to learn. It affects your confidence and self-esteem. As an adult, you can’t get the jobs you want, and navigating every day life can be difficult – from using the internet, to filling out forms or making sense of instructions on medicines or road signs. If you have children, it’s hard to support their learning, and so the cycle continues
The charity is currently working with 20 areas of the UK which are facing a 'literacy crisis'. These areas include Birmingham, Bradford, Cornwall, Manchester and the North East region. Alongside these areas, the charity work with teachers and educators to provide support and resources, and also working in other communities such as working with those involved in, or heading towards being involved in crime, jail or attending young offenders.
In their 30 years of being established, they have supported and inspired over 5million young people and worked with 17,000 schools. One of their current projects includes tackling the 'Cost of Literacy Crisis'.
On the charities website, they have so many resources which they keep regularly updated, such as 'Early Words Matter', a resource to 'ensure every child is empowered with the words they need to write their own story' and 'First Words Together', a programme to support and help those aged 0 to 2 with their speech, language and communication. These are in place to help schools and parents support their Childs development through to the ages of 5. On this page, the charity also provide research and findings for new parents, and the fellow website 'Words for Life', which is dedicated to providing parents with activities to support their young peoples literacy and communication skills.
These resources continue through primary aged young people and their teachers, including programmes to help develop school libraries, 'Young Poets', which allow students to visit cultural venues in their areas to inspire them to get writing and the 'Young readers programme', to name a few. This again continues into secondary education, such as the 'Literacy for Learning' programme for teachers, 'Young mystery writers', 'The power of voice' and 'Reading Champions', which supports reading cultures in school. These resources and programmes are in place to support young people be inspired and get interested in the world of books and continuing to develop their literacy skills.
Other programmes The National Literacy Trust have on offer include, 'Represent: focusing on girls in alternative provision', a programme for 11 to 14 year olds which uses texts to support communication skills and 'Game Changers' a reading programme for students who are at risk of exclusion.
Throughout the year, the trust put in place training programmes and workshops for professionals to go to help inspire the next generation, and for people to take action and help improve their students literacy. As well as these programmes, they also have conferences to explore current issues related to literacy and reading.
Below is a video from The National Literacy Trust about the Literacy Takeover in Bimingham's summer holidays. Birmingham is one of the charities locations which has been identified as having low literacy levels which are impacting on children. Over the summer, young people took part in workshops and arts and crafts to show that reading isn't just about sitting down and reading a book and all got a book to take home and keep:
About The Reading Agency
The Reading Agency is another charity based in the UK, they were set up in 2002 when 3 organisations merged to become a single charity. The charity provides several programmes and resources to support people around the country to get interested in reading.
They work with people from young children to adults across the UK, in 2022 to 2023 alone, they reached 2.17 million people, and over 139,000 children and families joined their programmes at their local libraries.
At present, the charity offer a range of programmes, providing something for everyone from young children to the elderly. These include 'BBC Radio 2 Book Club', which recommends great reads. 'Chatterbooks', a children's reading club. 'Reading Friends', a social and befriending programme, connecting people through stories and to make friends. 'Reading Sparks', inspiring children through STEM and the power of reading, 'Reading Well', supports people to understand their health through books. They are also behind the popular 'Summer Reading Challenge', which runs each year to help children aged 4 to 11 with their reading skills and build confidence over the summer holidays.
The charity works with a ranger of partnerships across the country to help deliver their programmes and campaigns and reach more people. These include working with publishers to promote books, schools to support children and teachers, libraries to deliver their reading programmes, prisons to support and encourage reading and literacy skills to adults serving time, health settings to help support health and wellbeing, workplaces to want to develop their skills and also reading groups which help create connections and read new books.
The National Literacy Trust and The Reading Agency
Both charities have very similar areas of focus and both share a common goal of promoting literacy and reading amongst all ages. The Reading Agency has a stronger focus on encouraging people from all walks of life and all ages to read for pleasure, where as The National Literacy Trust has more of a focus on supporting young people to improve their literacy skills. Both charities continue to research about the successes and challenges that people have regarding reading and coming up with the statistics and reports for local and national areas of the UK.
With recent statistics, the National Literacy Trust has suggested that the UK is heading towards a Literacy Crisis. This comes from the charities research finding that there is a lack of support from the government for schools.
Looking into the charities information and statistics, they suggest that 16.4% (1 in every 6 adults) in England have very poor literacy skills, this is 1 in 4 adults in Scotland, 1 in 8 adults in Wales, and 1 in 5 in Northern Ireland. This research suggests that adults who struggled in their early childhood with access reading and literacy education may fall behind people of similar ages. With this, these adults can have effected confidence, difficulty getting jobs and navigating everyday life, such as reading labels on food or medicine or filling in forms online.
Lily Cole, supermodel and author, discussed back in 2016 when interviewing with Channel 4 that data has shown that there are links between those who have poorer literacy skills are linked to homelessness, violent crimes, and other issues in the UK. She suggests that the UK government should invest money into the education system to find out why there are gaps in education surrounding literacy, Lily goes on to discuss that 48% of prisoners cant read or write, and 50% of homeless people in the UK are illiterate, and states that there is relationships between being illiterate, or struggling with literacy, and the future you go on to create. She continues to discuss a link between illiteracy and poverty in areas in the UK, which The National Literacy Trust also work heavily with.
The National Literacy Trust want to help children from a young age with these literacy skills which can support them into adult life, to break these 'gaps' and help children build confidence and skills to give them a bright and successful future.
In 2021, The National Literacy Trust wrote an open letter to the government regarding the disruption Covid-19 played on literacy and education. The letter states "Disruptions to education over the past year risk reversing the past decade’s progress in closing the attainment gap. The need to address the nation’s declining literacy rates is clear." The letter goes on further to state "Literacy failure costs the UK economy £2.5 billion each year and, if every child left primary school with the reading skills they needed, our economy could expand by over £32.1 billion by 2025." The charity wanted to address the situation and also provide support and advice on how strategies could be put in place to support solutions.
A month later, the government announced its first set of strategies for the 'educational recovery plan'. This quotes:
It has been announced as part of the government’s long-term plans to boost education recovery, that children and young people across England will be offered up to 100 million hours of free tuition to help them catch up on lost learning, a total of £1.4 billion is being invested, including £1 billion to support up to 6 million, 15-hour tutoring courses for disadvantaged school children, and the 16-19 tuition fund will be expanded, targeting key subjects such as maths and English.
More information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/huge-expansion-of-tutoring-in-next-step-of-education-recovery
With research by the charity, they found that around 106,000 5 year olds in England from one school year group aren't meeting the expected literacy levels for their age. If they had been provided the correct support, they would be reaching the expected level.
It has been noted that the Covid-19 pandemic also played a huge part on children's literacy levels due to school closures and a lack of education setting/support.
From further research from the effects that Covid have had on young people show that in 2021, 3 out of every 4 schools reported that reception aged children who started in Sept 2020, needed more support than those who started in Sept 2019. A report from 2022 showed that more children from disadvantaged backgrounds missed out on formal early learning in 2020 and 2021, which widened the development gap, and it was again stated by the government in 2022 that the pandemic had had a negative effect on communication and language development.
In Autumn 2021, they found that students aged 11 to 16 in secondary school, from disadvantaged backgrounds were roughly 3.5 months behind their peers in reading, whilst those in non-disadvantaged backgrounds were 2 months behind.
Each year The National Literacy Trust run their Annual Literacy Survey. Here are their findings from early 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic:
58,346 children and young people aged 9 to 18 in the UK took part in our Annual Literacy Survey between January and March 2020, while 4,141 children and young people aged 8 to 18 in the UK took part in our survey during lockdown between May and early June 2020.
Key findings - Children are reading and enjoying reading more during lockdown. Children’s enjoyment of reading has increased during lockdown (from 47.8% pre-lockdown to 55.9% post-lockdown), having reached a 15-year low before lockdown. More than a quarter (27.6%) of children and young people say they are enjoying reading more during lockdown. A third (34.5%) of children and young people say they are reading more during lockdown. Lockdown has increased the literacy engagement gap between boys and girls, with the gap in reading enjoyment widening from 2.3 percentage points at the beginning of 2020 to 11.5 percentage points during lockdown. The gender gap in daily reading also widened during lockdown, increasing from a 4.3 percentage point difference at the beginning of 2020 to a 7.4 percentage point difference during lockdown. However, the conditions of lockdown have meant that some children have faced greater barriers to reading. Some children and young people reported that a lack of access to books (with schools and libraries closed), a lack of quiet space at home and a lack of school/peer support had negatively affected their ability to read and their motivation to read for enjoyment
Literacy Statistics from 2013 compared to 2023.
All statistics come from the National Literacy Trusts' Annual Literacy Survey. In the 2023 survey, 71,351 responses were given from young people aged 5 to 18, and in 2013 they surveyed 29,422 young people aged 8 to 16.
2023 | 2013 | |
Young people who enjoy reading in their free time | 2 in 5 young people, or 43.4%. The lowest leves recorded since they first asked the question in 2005 | 53.5% of young people enjoy readying very much |
Young people who read daily | 3 in 10 young people, or 28%, with more girls then boys reading daily | 32.3% reading outside of class daily, and another 28.3% reading a few times a week |
It's clear to see in the data below and provided in the downloadable pdf documents from The National Literacy Trust website that reading enjoyment levels grew to a high in 2016, however has been slowly dropping again, especially in children aged 8 to 11.
A video developed by 'Texthelp' from 2016 which highlights some key statistics.
During The National Literacy Trusts research in 2023, they also ran a 'Reading for Mental Wellbeing', which looked into the relationship between reading and mental health. From their 2018 survey, they discovered that children who were more engaged with booked, with 3x more likely to have higher levels of mental wellbeing. Reading can have several benefits on mental health, including the following:
Stress levels being reduced: Reading can act as an escapism tool for children and adults to 'get lost' in new worlds, and meet new people. Exploring new worlds and stories can help you forget the stresses you may have in life.
Reading is also great for mindfulness and it can help you relax.
Cognitive stimulation: Reading can help stimulate the brain and the imagination, keeping the brain active and healthy, helping with vocabulary and thinking skills. It can also spark imagination and give young people new ideas for growth.
Expressing themselves: Reading can help young people express how they feel and what may be going on in their minds, both positive and negative emotions.
Emotional regulation: Reading can help young people learn about new emotions and can help young people regulate when stressed.
Alongside these, there is also research that shows how reading can help people feel more confident, sleep better, learn new words and things. 3 in 5 young people say reading helps them to relax. Other quotes from children provided for the Reading for Mental Wellbeing survey include:
"I like to read because it just relaxes me, and I like to listen to audio books because I can imagine what's happening in the story"
"I read lots of books at home, I read every single day and it is something that makes me feel happy and understood"
"Reading helped me be more confident in class when speaking"
"I like to read a lot at home because it clears my mind on what is happening at school" and "If something bad happens I might read to take my mind of it"
More quotes can be found here: https://nlt.cdn.ngo/media/documents/Reading_for_mental_wellbeing_in_2023.pdf
Literary poverty in the UK
As discussed above, research shows a clear link between poor literacy skills and the type of future children have, and these children are specifically more likely to experience, or be experiencing, poverty. In the UK, literary poverty is defined as a young person who reads, or is read to, for 15 minutes or less a week outside of their school education. In the UK 4.2 million young people are growing up in poverty, which works out at roughly 9 children per class of 30, research is showing that young people growing up in disadvantaged backgrounds are falling behind their peers.
Research developed by the Book Trust, another UK based charity encouraging children to get reading, shows that more than a quarter of a million primary aged young people are experiencing literary poverty to some degree, with 14% of 7 to 9 year olds currently falling into the category, and another 17% close to experiencing it. 6% of 7 to 9 year olds also never read with their parents or carers at home. Charities like the Book Trust are trying to encourage parents and carers to read with young people for 10 to 15 minutes a day, doing so can help children develop many skills including their language and listening skills, and her with their school development and writing.
Even prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, these statistics were being researching, and found that more than 180,000 5 year olds were starting their education without the literary skills needed for their education journeys. It is estimated that 25% of all year 6 aged children, both who are living in and out of areas of poverty, who are moving up to secondary schools are struggling with their literacy, as well as 36% of GCSE aged students struggling to get a 'good' grade in their English language exam.
This links back to the work that the National Literacy Trust and The Reading Agency does, and supports their ideas of how important reading outside of school can benefit literary skills and a young persons educational development from a young age.
Prior to the pandemic, research done by the charities shows that 8.6% of 5 to 18 year olds in the UK don't own a book of their own, with this figure raising from 7.9% to 12.4% for those living in a disadvantaged area since then pandemic.
The Children's Book Project
The Children's Book Project is another charity based in the UK whose aim is to help tackle book poverty in the UK, and is working to give every child the opportunity to own a book. "We believe in empowering children to choose a book they are motivated to read and in the power of reading communities. We put on book gifting events that are inclusive, joyful and have a tangible impact on every family that participates."
Statistics from their own website state "One in three disadvantaged children across the UK has fewer than ten books of their own at home, and one in ten has none."
Little Free Libraries
A Video from The Little Free Library, 'a nonprofit organisation with a mission to build community, inspire readers, and expand book access for all through a global network' about how books can inspire the future of young people:
Little Free Library is a community of people who build small cupboards, mail boxes, cupboards, etc, around their community and stock them with books for people to access for free, check out some of the photos of little free libraries people have made:
Learning Poverty, around the world
The Learning Poverty is described and defined and young people who are unable to read and understand simple text by the age of 10.
Data which has been researched by the World Bank, an institution who provide financial grants to low-medium income countries to help reduce poverty rates, has shown that 70% of 10 year olds in these countries fall into the Learning Poverty category, of not being able to read, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, this figure was at 57%, showing that a learning crisis in these countries has gotten worse. The statistics researched by other companies also show that almost 72 million young people aged between 4 and 11 aren't in any form of education, which could be due to a range of reasons, including poverty. "If children do not acquire the basics of literacy—together with numeracy and other foundational skills—the futures of hundreds of millions of children around the world, and their societies, are at grave risk." - Quoted from World Bank
The 'State of learning poverty' from 2022 by Unicef can be found here with more information regarding the situation, with graphs and figures. Looking into the World Bank information and data, it can be seen that literacy poverty levels are slowly rising, which most likely hasn't been helped due to the pandemic.
Using the statistics map from the World Bank website, shown above, you can see by region's, roughly, which are being effected the most by literacy poverty:
Most
Sub Saharan Africa
South and Latin America and the Caribbean
South Asia
Middle East and North Africa
East Asia and the Pacific
Central Asia, Europe and North America
Least
A look at these statistics in further detail shows that lower income counties, defined by GNI per capita*, have higher rates of literacy poverty, with these rates reducing as you get to the higher income countries, see below: *Definition: Gross National Income (GNI) per capita is the dollar value of a country's final income in a year divided by its population using Atlas methodology.
Region (Examples of countries in the region), percentage range of learning poverty in region
Low Income Countries, GNI per Capita of $1135 or lower
Middle East (Yemen and Afghanistan), 93% to 95%
Africa (Chad, Congo, Madagascar, etc) 77% to 99%
Middle Income Countries, GNI per Capita between $1135 and $13,845
Central Asia (China, Russia, India etc), 2% to 75%
South East Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, cambodia, Indonesia), 1% to 70%
Eastern Europe and Middle East, 8% to 52%
Africa (South Africa, Botswana, Algeria), 36% to 95%
Latin America (Mexico and Costa Rica), 29% to 68%
South America (Argentine, Brazil, Peru, etc) 48% to 75%
Middle income countries are home to 75% of the world's population and 62% of the world's poor.
High Income Countries, GNI per Capita of $13,845 of higher
North America (US and Canada), 4% to 8%
Western Europe (UK, France, Sweden, Greece, etc), 2% to 11%
Australia (Including New Zealand), 8% to 12%
Japan and Korean, 2% to 3%
EAU, Omen and Omen, 11% to 42%
Chile and Uruguay, 36% to 42%
Each category of income suffers from some sort of literacy poverty or literacy crisis, and although the UK is shown to have 2% to 11% of young people in these statistics, you can see form the research above, focusing on the UK, how these problems can impact on young people, with each area, country and/or region facing its on challenges and reasons as to why they are being impacted, some of these are discussed below:
Low Income Countries face a number of challenges including limited access to education, this could be to do with poverty or how far children live away from their school and the struggles of getting to school. I could also be to do with the quality of education, many schools found in these counties may be in poorer areas, where teacher training high quality, overcrowded classroom or a lack of resources like textbooks and other education materials. Language barriers can be a reason as well as socioeconomic and gender factors, from children being expected to support the home, lack of parental support, lack of food and water and how girls may less likely to be able to access education.
Medium Income Countries face their own challenges, which include inequality, especially in more rural areas, again with girls struggling to access education, the quality of their education can be effected for similar reasons to low income countries, such as teacher training standards and lack of resources. Due to growing communities, schools are being overcrowded which again, can lead to teachers spending less time with each student, and resources having to be stretched. War and Economic pressures on families can lead to students dropping out of school and going out to work to support their families, and again, language barriers can be in place.
High Income Countries have a lower poverty rate overall, however still face there own challenges, with some being talked about above, some other challenges include performance gaps, from children growing up in lower-income families or in disadvantaged areas to an array of learning disables or socio-economic factors. Technology is advancing quickly, and not all children have access to these which can lead to a 'digital divide', mental health rates are rising with anxiety and depression in young people, which can impact on their education, especially those who cant afford or access mental health support services.
Around the world, organisations and non-profit charities are reaching out to support countries and communities who need support, through a range of programmes and initiatives. Below are a handful of some of the fantastic works these companies do to support low to middle income countries, and a bit about what they do.
Room to Read - Supporting Countries around the World
Room to Read is a non profit organisation who support a range of countries around the world. Their aim is to create a world where all children can pursue education to lead them to a successful future, whether male or female. They aim to create a world free from illiteracy and gender discrimination. Just one area of the organisations focuses on Literacy. Room to Read have a literacy programme which supports to getting kids learning, adapting to different communities, establish libraries and distribute a range of diverse and culturally relevant books to inspire reading.
Room to Reads latest project includes the 'She Creates change', which aims to inspire girls aged 12 to 18 to create a change in their lives and communities through exploring a range of topics from financial literacy to climate justice and education. They aim to reach 432 million young girls through the project.
Books2Africa - Supporting countries in Africa
Books2Africa is a UK based charity who aims to send donated books and computers all over Africa for children and adults alike. The charity was started in 2012 by 4 Nigerian relatives who came to study in the UK who wanted to make a difference to communities and improve the quality of education in Africa. The charity works by having people donate books, having them collected from donators homes or being dropped off at a drop-off point, once books have made it to the Books2Africa centre, books are scanned into their database and tracked, so people can see where their books are going and how they have made an impact.
So far the charity has donated 3,108,000+ books and 250+ refurbished computers throughout the African continent.
Aprende Leyendo - Supporting children in Colombia
Aprende Leyendo is a literacy programme through the World Literacy Foundation to ensure that every child has the literacy skills needed to reach their potential. The programme provide free books and resources to children ages 4 to 14 growing up in disadvantaged communities around Colombia.
In 2020, their literacy programme impacted 3000+ children through different sessions. Currently the organisation provides digital learning tools to children where internet and resources are at a minimum, bringing innovative technology such as e-books and activities. Each week children join reading groups and English lessons around the country. They also distribute books, journals, colouring pencils and more to children to encourage learning and well as delivering workshops to parents.
The Asia Foundation - Supporting countries in Asia
The Asia Foundation runs a campaign called Lets Read, which brings digital resources for people throughout the Asia continent. Their aim is to help children to love eating, sharpen vocational and research abilities and enhance language skills. The Lets Read! campaign began in 2015 in Cambodia, the charity have equipped schools, libraries and underprivileged young people with Khmer and English language storybooks through low-cost technology tablets. These books explore an array of different topics from STEM to gender equality and mental disabilities.
The Lets Read! campaign has since made it to Cambodia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, Mongolia and more.
Total Hours Researching: 7.5
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