Children’s reading should prioritise pleasure over learning, says laureate

The children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce has urged the government to prioritise pleasure over learning in children’s reading. Giving evidence to MPs on the education committee, which is investigating the crisis in reading for pleasure among children, the screenwriter and novelist said conversations about children’s reading too often revert to attainment in school. He also said that the “business of learning to read” can put children off the pleasure of reading. “We can teach them all the steps,” he told MPs, “but the important thing is that they dance.” The number of children reading for pleasure in the UK has declined sharply in recent years. According to the National Literacy Trust’s annual survey, just one in three children and young people aged eight to 18 enjoy reading in their spare time – a 36% decrease since 2005. Cottrell-Boyce said the reasons included screens, austerity, Covid and poverty, including the kind of “furniture poverty” experienced in emergency social housing. “No child is going to have a bedtime story if they have not got a bed,” he said. Frank Cottrell-Boyce is coming to the end of his two-year term as children’s laureate. Photograph: David Bebber He urged the government to focus on early years and reading for pleasure at home and nursery, with support for parents and nursery workers who may lack confidence in reading aloud to their children as a result of their own negative experiences. …