A Reading Paradox Long in the Making
Charlotte Hacking responds to a new report showing that the focus on measuring literacy progress in schools has a detrimental effect on reading for pleasure.
This month marks the publication of the 2026 HarperCollins and Farshore Reading Trends Analysis, The Reading Paradox: How Our Focus on Literacy is Undermining Reading for Pleasure. A paradox indeed; but one that has been years in the making, highly predictable, and warned about repeatedly while too many chose not to listen.
In March, I presented a keynote at the annual conference of the National Literacy Trust on the decline in reading for pleasure: how we arrived at this point and what might now be done to reverse some of these patterns and trends. The publication of this report only reinforces what many teachers, librarians, literacy experts and families have felt for a long time; that in our pursuit of measurable literacy outcomes, we have steadily eroded children’s relationship with reading itself.
As the late great educationalist and reading specialist Margaret Meek-Spencer observed back in 1992, ‘There is always some kind of public concern about literacy. Parents are naturally anxious about their children’s education, at the heart of which is literacy. Schools and teachers are expected to assume responsibility for making children literate in demonstrable ways.’
That final phrase matters enormously: in demonstrable ways. For decades now, literacy has increasingly become something schools must prove through data, targets and assessment, rather than something children experience as meaningful, joyful and deeply human.
The roots of our current situation can be traced clearly through education policy. In 1997, Tony Blair entered Downing Street under the famous mantra of ‘Education, Education, Education,’ and with this came the birth of the National Literacy Strategy. Introduced in England in 1998, it was a significant government initiative aimed at improving literacy standards in primary schools, driven by concerns around low attainment and structured around the ambition that 80% of 11-year-olds would meet nationally expected standards in English by 2002.
The strategy brought with it the daily ‘literacy hour’ – structured, systematic and measurable by achievement in the SATs at Key Stages 1 and 2. Alongside this came the first National Year of Reading, launched with substantial government funding, celebrity endorsements and partnerships across libraries and media. Its intention was admirable: to transform the nation’s attitude toward reading while boosting literacy standards.
Yet even then, the seeds of contradiction were already present.
By 2004, Literacy Strategy Director Steven Anwyll openly reflected on the unintended consequences of the strategy’s emphasis on attainment. He acknowledged that increasing measurable outcomes at the expense of children’s enjoyment and engagement with reading represented a serious problem. His response was to push additional funding toward campaigns promoting reading for enjoyment through the National Literacy Trust, followed in 2008 by a second National Year of Reading.
But this also reinforced a growing divide: literacy standards became the domain of government policy and accountability, while reading for pleasure increasingly became the responsibility of charities, campaigns and enrichment initiatives. Schools found themselves trapped in the middle; accountable for attainment yet simultaneously expected to cultivate a love of reading with diminishing time, funding and autonomy to do so.
At precisely the same moment, another transformation was taking place inside schools: the rapid rise of educational technology. During the early 2000s, school libraries disappeared to make room for computer suites. Interactive whiteboards replaced big books. Budgets shifted toward hardware, subscriptions and digital infrastructure.
This shift was compounded by years of austerity that left school finances stretched to breaking point. Technology, once purchased, demands continual reinvestment. When devices fail, they must be replaced. Books, meanwhile, can remain on shelves for years, quietly deteriorating while still technically ‘usable.’ Yet the real question is not whether a book still physically functions, but whether it still invites children in and whether it still reflects their lives, interests, identities and imaginations.
At the same time, the teaching of reading itself narrowed significantly following the publication of the 2006 Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading, led by Jim Rose. The review mandated systematic synthetic phonics as the primary approach to early reading instruction. This was followed by the introduction of Letters and Sounds, a government-produced phonics framework for Early Years and Key Stage One.
For politicians such as Nick Gibb, this represented the solution to low literacy standards. As schools minister, Gibb later intensified this approach further, recommending that schools adopt approved systematic synthetic phonics programmes paired with decodable reading schemes aligned strictly to pupils’ phonics knowledge.
Over time, this generated an increasingly commercialised phonics landscape, with schools encouraged – and in some cases effectively required – to invest heavily in validated schemes, training packages, assessments and decodable readers, including involvement from the educational arms of children’s publishers. Millions of pounds have since been spent on phonics programmes, scheme books and on the annual Phonics Screening Check introduced for Year 1 pupils.
Yet despite this enormous investment, the evidence for transformational impact remains weak. Whilst we all know and agree that phonics is critical for reading and writing, and must be explicitly taught, The Education Policy Institute concluded in 2025 that there was no clear evidence that the Phonics Screening Check had improved national average levels of reading or literacy attainment over time.
It is time for policymakers and educational publishers to reflect on the potential impact not only on reading for pleasure, but also for overall sales in the children’s book market as the collateral damage of an unbalanced approach to the teaching of reading has become increasingly visible.
Schools’ ability to invest in one of their most valuable resources – high-quality children’s books – has steadily diminished. The 2021 Reading for Pleasure survey conducted by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education revealed the scale of the problem: large numbers of teachers reported either having no budget for new books or personally funding classroom collections themselves. Others relied on donations simply to refresh stock.
No single policy or initiative alone caused the decline in reading for pleasure. But together they have created the perfect storm.
The consequences are starkly reflected in the data. The BookTrust Family Reading Survey found that only 25% of 11-year-olds now say they love reading. More troubling still is that this disengagement begins early: only a third of seven-year-olds report loving reading.
Before the age of seven, childhood should be immersed in stories, songs, play and conversation. It should involve connection: with language, with imagination, with other people and with the wider world. Yet increasingly, young children spend more time sitting in formal instructional environments than ever before.
And for what result?
The long-standing tail of underachievement remains stubbornly persistent. Reading for pleasure continues to decline year after year. England now records the lowest levels in the National Literacy Trust Annual Literacy Survey since data collection began in 2005, and we are now amid a third National Year of Reading with millions more invested.
The HarperCollins and Farshore report also examines changing patterns in book purchasing, noting that most children’s book buyers are now light or occasional buyers, purchasing only a handful of books each year, while the number of heavy book buyers continues to shrink. Yet framing this primarily as a challenge of persuading people to buy ‘just one more book’ risks overlooking the much deeper realities shaping family life.
This is not simply a crisis of interest. It is also a crisis of affordability, time and social inequality.
Books have become a luxury in many households already grappling with the pressures of the cost-of-living crisis. Sure Start Centres and community libraries, which provided access to books and family literacy have faced cuts and closure. At the same time, many parents and carers are working longer hours simply to stay afloat. The economy of time has contracted alongside the economy of money. Families are exhausted. Bedtime stories become rushed rather than cherished. Shared reading competes with work schedules, stress and financial anxiety, again exacerbated by the round the clock impact of workplace technology.
Parents are not the problem. Schools are not the problem either.
Schools have responded to the priorities signalled to them through curriculum policy, accountability systems and funding structures. When schools are encouraged to invest in technology, intervention programmes and tightly structured reading schemes while struggling to afford diverse, engaging books, a message is inevitably communicated about what matters most.
The same can be said of the wider educational culture. Reading for pleasure is signalled through recurring national campaigns such as World Book Day, National Poetry Day and the National Years of Reading, rather than being embedded at the heart of the curriculum and everyday school life.
Every single school day should contain stories, poetry and opportunities to read simply because reading matters. Every year should be a year of reading. That requires curriculum time, sustained investment in books, properly funded libraries, and recognition that all forms of reading deserve equal value – picture books, graphic novels, poetry and contemporary fiction.
Other countries have begun to recognise this. Nations such as Sweden, Denmark and Finland have started shifting investment away from excessive dependence on educational technology and back toward books, libraries and reading culture itself.
Because reading is not merely an academic skill.
Stories help us understand ourselves and one another. They shape empathy, identity, memory and belonging. They connect children to language and to human experience in ways no data metric can fully capture. Deep reading of the kind we do in physical texts as opposed to the shallow reading we do online not only enhances our ability to analyse, criticize, infer, deduce and empathise but also increases our ability to discern misinformation, to spot scams and to avoid being manipulated – vital skills in the current climate.
At a time when England’s young people report some of the lowest wellbeing levels in Europe, this matters profoundly. A young child curled up with a book beside an invested adult is not simply learning to decode words. An older child read aloud to by an engaged parent is not being overly scaffolded. They are learning that reading is comforting, meaningful, pleasurable and a lifelong experience. They are experiencing language as connection, security and joy.
And perhaps that is the real paradox at the heart of this report: in trying so hard to measure reading, we have too often forgotten what reading is actually for.
Charlotte Hacking is the Teacher Engagement Lead at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy at UCL and the Research and Curriculum Lead and Teacher at Herne Hill School. She is also a children’s poetry editor on titles including The First Year and The Final Year by Matt Goodfellow and The Poetry World of John Agard, and co-author of The Balancing Act: an evidence-based approach to teaching phonics, reading and writing.
