Welcome to this afternoon’s evidence session of the Education Committee’s inquiry on reading for pleasure. Are there any declarations from members of the Committee? I do not think there are. In that case, can I ask our witnesses to introduce themselves?

Hello everyone. My name is Professor Christine O’Farrelly. I am a research professor at the PEDAL centre for research on play in education, development and learning at the University of Cambridge. We do a range of work. My work is focused on co-developing, testing, scaling and widening access to evidence-based and evidence-informed support for children and families in the early years, so that babies and young children can thrive. A lot of that work involves parenting programmes and parenting interventions, and we work in a very multidisciplinary way; I am a research psychologist by background, but I work with a range of professionals and collaborators.

Hello, I am Frank Young, chief executive of Parentkind. We represent parents in education, particularly the school system. We work with PTAs in 14,000 schools across the UK, and we have established Parent-Friendly Schools in the last year to try to encourage schools to engage with parents more effectively.

Hello, I am Julie Cigman. I am an early education associate, consultant and author. I have worked in a variety of ways in early years—as a teacher, as a teacher trainer and as a local authority advisory teacher. More recently, I have been focusing on literacy and running early writing projects, originally focusing on boys, to narrow the gap between boys and girls, but more recently broadening out from there. I see writing as a way into reading. The two are very linked.

Thank you very much. Previously, we have heard evidence on the science of reading for pleasure. We have been trying to understand why reading—and particularly reading for fun—is so important and what works in terms of the scientific evidence base. But today we are thinking about the role of parents, early years settings and the home learning environment. What do we know about the role of parents and carers and the home learning environment in supporting children to get into the habit of reading for pleasure?

The home learning environment is critical for children’s development, especially their school readiness but also their identities as learners and readers. We have a whole host of evidence to support this. Book sharing, in particular, is probably the most critical part of the home learning environment. All of the home learning environment is important, but in terms of the evidence, it can equivalise some of the income disparity in children’s skills. Particularly where there is daily reading in the home, it seems to be especially powerful for children and families. There is strong evidence to support that this is critical for children’s development, and also that programmes that support the home learning environment can go on to improve children’s language development and school readiness. There is a range of evidence to support that, and I am happy to expand on it.

What are the ingredients of a good home learning environment for reading for pleasure specifically?

Book sharing—and in the early years, we would make a distinction between reading and book sharing. You have heard evidence about these interactive, participatory, playful moments of sharing and exploring books together. We think that is especially critical as a component of the home learning environment. When that happens, the caregiver or parent follows a child’s interest; they expand on it in a way that is meaningful to the child, and that brings in their other experiences and what they already know about the child in a playful way; and they use an animated voice and actions. All those things make it engaging and fun—you mentioned fun earlier—which brings both the parent and the child back to read again. That is where we get a snowball effect where it is enjoyable, so they want to do it again. It is also developmentally fertile for children’s learning. That learning improves children’s skills, and we see that reciprocal snowballing happen over time. In terms of supporting the home learning environment, it is about how we support equal opportunities for children and families to have those rich, interactive, playful moments around books. It is both about having access in the home to books that are developmentally appropriate, and having the confidence and skills to get stuck in and have those moments.

We often talk about the home learning environment and the role of parents as the missing piece of the education jigsaw. I am pleased that we have a moment to talk about the role of parents. We know from the synthesised evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation that good parental engagement in education, on average, increases learning by about four months in the year, which is a substantial leap in learning. A lot of that evidence is predicated on reading to your children and better literacy. The role of parents is often overlooked, but it is critical in education, particularly around reading. Parents, particularly parents of primary-aged children who are learning to read and exploring books for the first time, generally get the message that reading is important. But there is still more we can do to help parents understand quite how important it is and how almost critical it is to their future educational performance and their life chances. There is a gap in parents’ understanding of whose responsibility it is to support children to read for fun. In research that we conducted, about seven in 10 parents say it is their responsibility, but about one in five say it is mainly the responsibility of schools to help children learn for fun. That points to a gap, particularly with parents. Most parents of primary-aged children are reading to them most days. They are spending about 20 minutes or so a day with their primary-aged children. In the research that we have done, one of the most concerning pieces of evidence is around parents’ confidence in their own literacy levels and ability to read. About a third of parents said to us that they have avoided reading to their children because they worry about their own reading ability. Clearly the child is central here, but if the Committee is going to look at gaps and areas for policy intervention, we must understand that not all parents read to their children equally and almost a third say they avoid it. They know, almost instinctively, it is important, but their own abilities are preventing them.

For me, reading is about taking meaning from print. The early years are a time when children are learning and developing at a really fast rate. They are developing attitudes, absorbing attitudes from people around them, and picking up messages from adults and other children. We need to be really positive about what reading is and give positive messages. Frank mentioned that some parents are very unconfident, and I have experienced that as well. It is about sharing the message that reading helps children to access books. It is not about decoding words—that happens later on, and it is essential. But if children can take meaning from books, they will enjoy them, because there are some wonderful books out there. That involves having conversations. Children learn in a social context; they learn with people around them. Years ago, Frank Smith talked about “joining the literacy club”. We are all part of the literacy club, and we do not really think about it; we just use literacy all the time in our world. We can recreate that for children by giving them access to books, on their own as well as with adults. The interactions are crucial, but there is also the joy of just picking up a book and looking at it themselves. By doing that, they learn how to read a book without reading the words. You may have come across “Rosie’s Walk”, a picture book by Pat Hutchins. There are 32 words and one sentence in the whole book, so the story is told through the pictures, not through the words. Children can read the book without being able to read the words. I have numerous examples of children reading books and mimicking the language—using the language of the books they are holding. They are learning a really valuable skill so that, when they come to do their own writing or when they come to read, they understand how books work.

What are the main barriers and challenges to reading with children faced by parents and carers? How can they be supported to overcome those barriers? Professor O’Farrelly: There are a range of barriers, and some of them are very systemic: poverty, income disparities, stress and the constellation of risk factors that goes with that. From evidence in “Children of the 2020s”, which was released just this year, we see that there are good levels of reading as part of a home learning environment activity, but there is an income differential within that. About 77% of families in the highest income quintile are reading daily to their two-year-olds, and it is 32%, I think, in the lowest income quintile. There are barriers we need to unpack around why there is such a stark difference in terms of enjoyable shared reading activities. As we spoke about, some of that comes with the confidence to pick up a book. That could come from having poor experiences of education yourself, and maybe not identifying as a reader yourself. I will come back to thinking about how we can address some of those challenges. Some of it is time, being able to access support, and having equal access to support in family hubs and in the places where support is available. Some families are facing acute stress, and where your stress levels are acute, it can often be hard to have the rewarding, responsive, attuned interactions with your child that you might otherwise want to have. If you are facing housing insecurity or food insecurity, it is difficult to make that part of the everyday routine. There are a variety of barriers around socioeconomic factors, confidence and the experience of education. There are also barriers in terms of who the reading is for and where support serves those different caregivers—fathers, other caregivers or kinship carers—and how we bring reading into all the different family constellations that children find themselves in. Also, there are barriers in terms of being able to access books that reflect your culture and reflect the language you speak in the home. There are barriers that families encounter in a variety of different spaces and places, as well as in terms of their own experiences. Those make it harder for them to have enriching and rewarding interactions, which we know are so important for children’s pleasure in reading books and for their outcomes. There is probably a lot we can all say about what we can do about that. To touch on Julie’s point about having ways in that do not require literacy skills of the parent, one of the things that we use in our Playtime with Books programme—an evidence-based dialogic reading programme that Lynne Murray and Peter Cooper developed—is books with very few words like “Rosie’s Walk”, “Hug” and some of the beautiful books by Helen Oxenbury. That invites the caregiver in, without needing to have literacy skills themselves. It also invites them to notice things, respond to their child’s interest and create a very individualised, personal experience for the child that is meaningful, feels safe and fun, and brings them both back to reading. There are ways that we can tackle some of these barriers, but getting that support equally to families is critical. Having equality of opportunity, in terms of where families are at, is crucial, and perhaps we will have a chance to talk more about that.

Frank, your research has shown exactly what Christine said: parents and carers on higher incomes are more likely than those on lower incomes to read to their children. Why is that, in your view?

You have to recognise the issues of time and stress. Our research shows that parents on higher incomes are more likely to read to their children—particularly primary-aged children—most days, versus parents on the lowest incomes. We really have to focus on issues around stress in the household and time in this inquiry. That is both household chores—domestic life—and work pressures. That is different for different families. For a middle-class family, it might be long hours, but for families involved in shift work, it might be different hours that are not conducive to supporting your child outside school. We need to look at time, and we need to look at types of books, too. One of the conversations we need to have is about the sort of literature that children are exposed to. I speak as the father of a 10-year-old son. “Bunny vs Monkey” is hugely popular in our household, because my son is of the age where he is consuming that sort of literature. That is not necessarily being promoted by his school or the education system, but it is literature that he and many other boys of his age are picking up quite naturally. We should be joyful and supportive of that. If I may, I would like to make two other points. First, we need to talk about screens in the home. I am sure this will be very prominent in your work. Parents tell us that they are very concerned about the prevalence of screens in the home, whether for gaming or social media. We know that children are more than twice as likely to have a daily habit of watching YouTube, TikTok or other videos than of reading a book for fun. We need to recognise the role of screens in crowding out reading for pleasure. My final point, which the Committee may well touch on, is that we need to have a conversation about how far homework is crowding out the opportunity to read for pleasure, for joy, versus reading because a teacher has told you to read something and you are being compelled to do this. There are only so many hours in the evening, after school, so how far is homework getting in the way of reading for pleasure?

I would echo what Frank and Christine have said, but I would like to add that one of the barriers is that parents are frightened of their children failing. It is probably largely due to the fact that teaching reading has become very professionalised—very technical—so there is a right way to do it in school. That creates a gap between parents and the school. Parents will back off from doing things with their children, particularly those who do not have high literacy levels themselves and do not choose to read. The message that we need to be giving is that it is okay to look at a car manual together and talk about it. It is okay to look at a recipe book. It is okay to just have your child read to you. It is okay to look at the pictures together. It is okay to have an older brother or sister read. It is okay to just have books around. You do not have to be decoding every word in a book, which will obviously not happen with the very young children. You access books in any way you can. Somehow, we have to share the message with parents that they need to model reading themselves, because children do what they see the adults around them doing. They play cook and play driver, but they will not play at reading if they are not seeing it. That is really important. It is fantastic that we have the Best Start family hubs coming back. In a lot of early years settings, it is best practice to have core books that they share with parents. They can be multilingual if it is an area where parents speak different languages: they can be read in the home language as well as in English. Parents can then take them home, but they have been introduced to them in the setting first of all. The children read the books in the setting as well, so the children become familiar with the books, the parents become familiar, and then they can share them together at home. There are also times when parents are invited into the setting to watch a story time. Once children get to reception, and certainly further up into primary school, a lot of schools feel that they do not have time for story time any more, which is really sad. It is such a precious time of shared attention, when the adults and children share access to the same emotions, as well as the joy of it all—there is so much to talk about. The message is just that any books are okay—any books at all.

We have heard about barriers to reading, and I want to focus on support. How effective is the support that is currently available to parents and carers to help them to develop a habit of reading with their children? Can I start with you, Julie?

I like that you have used the word “habit”, because it is all about habit. If we want children to grow up to be readers, it is a habit that has to be instilled very early on. That is where we need the support of the children’s centres and early years settings to do the things that I was talking about: to invite the parents in and welcome them to stay at the beginning and end of the session, and possibly through the session. They can sit in a very inviting book corner, which will have books for children but possibly also good, high-quality books for adults, so that they can pick up a book and look at it—that is fine. They do not just have to be reading with the children; they can be reading side by side, but they are both engaged in reading. There are a lot of parenting programmes that encourage parents and build their confidence—they need to be building their confidence. One of the children’s centres local to where I live has an after-school club. Families are invited to the centre, where there is a creative activity, tea and coffee and drinks and snacks for the children and parents to draw them in, and they have a story session. Books have been donated, and the children and families can take them home. Some of the parents have said, “Really, we can take these home?” and they are encouraged to. Sometimes they bring them back and will swap them over. On a sunny day, they will take the session out to the park, because the parents do not tend to come into the children’s centre; they will choose to go to the park with the children, so they take the reading session there. Again, it is about modelling. You have practitioners who are modelling how to read a book with children, and it is building the parents’ confidence and sharing the message that you should look at books together, whatever you are taking from them. The only thing is that they are no-phone zones, so it’s, “Put your phone away.” Frank Young: On that point about phones, it is really important—I say this as the CEO of a parents’ charity—that parents are models of good behaviour, especially when it comes to screens. As somebody who is constantly glued to their phone, I speak as a sinner. We as adults may think, “Well, we are reading,” and we might be reading a newspaper or even a book on our phone, but a six or seven-year-old child cannot distinguish that visually. There is a responsibility on parents. Parents generally recognise that, but we clearly have much further to go with modelling good screen habits and picking up a physical book to demonstrate and model what we want for our children. I would make a couple of other points on that. There is still a big gap in our research around schools really pushing strong, pro-reading messages to children. We found that about a third of parents say their school has never spoken to them about how they can encourage reading for fun. That rises to about 44% for parents who have children at secondary school. In all our research on reading for fun, that phase from primary to secondary is critical. All the indicators fall off a cliff at secondary level, when children who are developing a reading habit start to recoil from it. I suppose it is no coincidence that the screens start to take over at that age. We should mention school libraries, too. Parents and children are using school libraries regularly, but again, there is a big divide between secondary and primary: they are much more likely to be using them at the primary level. I would also like to mention the role of PTAs. We estimate that PTAs typically raise about £10 million a year for reading projects and school libraries. Those are parents who get together, entirely voluntarily, to raise money for schools; books, reading projects and school libraries are one of the most common areas they raise money for. Given the context of the Government having provided £5 million for school libraries, a real comment needs to be made about the role of PTAs in supporting reading in schools at scale. We have to have higher expectations of schools, and of parents themselves, for promoting the importance of reading, and helping their children to read as a fun activity and a building block of learning. Professor Christine O’Farrelly: I would like to bring the conversation to even earlier years. Reading for pleasure starts way before children can read, in the shared pleasure of book sharing together. Those habits—getting into those family rhythms and routines—start really early. It happens in the very first years: it is either part of your routine or it is not. Also, income-based differences in children’s language skills are apparent from 18 months: we saw that in the “Children of the 2020s” study of two-year-olds. The Early Intervention Foundation, now called Foundations, has said that we need to tackle those differences in language skills before a child’s first year in school, so in infancy. In turn, I would say that that needs a coherent offer across the early years system. We in PEDAL have been fortunate to work with Ben Lewing at Making Evidence Work, who has done deep dives into the local system and the book sharing offerings of a number of local authorities. There is a lot of activity and good practice happening in local authorities, but this is a public health effort—from health visiting and midwifery to Best Start in Life family hubs and libraries. We need a coherent strategy that brings it together and uses joined-up messaging so that parents are hearing about book sharing and getting the skills to give them confidence from all their touchpoints in the system, and those touchpoints are all strength-based and supportive. Obviously, that system has to be resourced, but we have a real opportunity there. That was uncovered in Ben’s work, which I think is very compelling. What else works is when we can provide evidence-based programmes for families. There was a study done in children’s centres using the programme that I mentioned that was developed by Lynne Murray and Peter Cooper—what we call our Playtime with Books programme. That showed a difference between children and families who received a programme in a children’s centre and those who did not. At six months, it was equivalent to about two months’ progress in developing their language skills. That is proof in practice. These programmes can be delivered in the system, but we need to do even more now to reach families where they are at. That is why we are looking at other ways that we can offer support.

Following on from your response, especially about even before the child goes to school, what should be the role of health visitors in supporting parents and carers and babies, toddlers and children to read for pleasure? What support do public libraries give and how can that be improved?

Health visitors have a huge role to play. One of the opportunities that we have here is the infrastructure from book gifting, from Bookstart and the partnerships that it has with health visitors and other people in the system who do that book gifting. When you give a book to a family, whether that is in the six-week visit, it is a moment to shift from, “How many wet nappies has your baby had?” to a moment of, “Now we are going to talk about enjoying your baby and having fun together.” You are putting something into their hands. If we could build on that—I know BookTrust does huge work in this space—and resource it to extend that touchpoint momentarily, model some of the skills and give supportive feedback to families to enable them to take the next step and make that habit forming, that could have huge potential. Obviously, health visiting is very stretched, but there is huge potential in the system to create reading for pleasure right from the start and good book sharing, which will pay dividends from a public health perspective. Libraries came up quite a lot in the work that Ben did with PEDAL in terms of enthusiasm and trust, but not every family will go into a library, so we need to meet families where they are. There is perhaps an untapped opportunity. Rhyme time is a wonderful resource that we have embedded in the library system. If we could send families home with ways for them to check out more support and build that into their habits at home, that would be a wonderful opportunity. There is huge potential there, but we need a strategy that joins that up across the early years system to make it everybody’s business to support book sharing right from the start. That opportunity is there, but we need to take that further step.

Frank and Julie, would you like to add anything else about health visitors and public libraries’ role in supporting parents and carers?

On health visitors and settings, it is about modelling again. Libraries can have sessions where they make story sacks with parents. If parents come in and they make the story sacks together, it helps them to understand how children access books. It is probably more likely to happen in a setting, but it could happen in a library, and health visitors could run sessions as well. That is maybe out of their remit, but, because they have that relationship with the families, they are well placed.

I think there is enormous potential for public libraries to be really vivid places—hubs for reading and activities that bring families together that are visually appealing to young parents, new parents and very young children. Lots of places do do that. Lots of libraries have moved beyond the model of simply being a place for dusty books. They are community centres now and do much more than just allow you to take a book out. We should really celebrate that and encourage it. I would be slightly hesitant about health visitors, as a profession. My impression is that they are significantly overloaded, and there is probably a limit to what they can do effectively, because of the pressures on their time. Clearly, however, where you have a profession going into homes, that is an avenue to share information. However, there is online information, too. The Government, and the Department of Education in particular, are doing a lot to bring together good-quality resources for parents. It is currently doing work on what online resources we can develop for parents that are best in class. They are high-quality resources that are also well-received by parents.

Frank, I want to pick up on two points you made previously. First, surveys recognise that parents value reading at home highly, but the reality is that there has been a dramatic decline in shared reading. You also made the point about the unintended consequences of homework and possibly overcrowding home life, so that reading for pleasure is not as it should be. How can schools meaningfully engage with parents and carers to support them with reading for pleasure?

I think that is right. This is not all schools—clearly, a lot of schools do a very good job—but there is a gap for schools, particularly primary schools when children enter the school system, to really talk about those good habits and developing reading for pleasure, as distinct from: “This is the curriculum we all deliver and we need your help to deliver the curriculum at home.” I think we need to find space within the school—the school day and school leadership—to be much closer to parents, so that we see them as an additional partner. The Government talk about partnership; that is language that we would absolutely recognise and encourage, which sees parents as a partner in delivering education. But here we are talking about reading for pleasure and I think that is quite distinct. I think we have much further to go to really project the message that developing a love for reading is a building-block for life, versus simply: “There is a curriculum and stuff we have to get through.” Then there are scary messages about what we do want you to do, and what we do not want you to do. May I also make the point about PTAs? This often gets overlooked, and we would naturally be the charity that represents PTA groups. There is a very natural communication mechanism here with parents who are like you—their son or daughter goes to school at your children’s school, in their class, and they might live down the road. I think there are opportunities for policy makers to think about how we can use parents to communicate to other parents in a very authentic way, particularly where you might have parents who themselves have had a bad experience of education, or of school. They might be nervous about school; they might be nervous or sceptical about people in authority. However, a parent in a parent group can speak very authentically to them, because they potentially are very like them and live the same sort of life, so we should also look at that aspect.

You mentioned the early years and the Best Start family hubs, so it would be good to understand what you think they should do to ensure that reading for pleasure is built into their work from the earliest stage. I do not mind who answers the question first.

I think there is huge opportunity in terms of what they can do. It is about having different offers for different families’ needs as well, and making sure that we have an appropriate offer for families with the greatest needs. I think there is some universal-level support around getting the messages out there on why book sharing is so important and how to do it, including showing parents what that looks like, so that they can see it and practise that modelling. Some of that will happen in the Best Start family hubs and some of it needs to reach families where they are, if they are facing barriers to coming into those services regularly. We know that from our research. We have been able to provide access to some of the programme content online for some families, and they have said that has been fundamental to them being able to access some of the content. The relationships with families are critical. Where families need more support, we need an offer that goes beyond the universal level of support, that gives more individualised support to families. That is where the relationship is key. That has come up time and time again with our work. We did some work with Nesta looking at the value proposition around book sharing across the system, and the relationship was fundamental. That can hold parents who may be low in confidence or face other barriers. We have worked with Best Start family hubs and a range of other VCS organisations to deliver the programme. One of the things we have done is offer more personalised feedback, called video feedback, for families with greater need. That shows where the parent becomes the model. You show the parent. They share a clip of themselves book sharing, and you show them them doing it and the reaction they get from their child when they are having those enjoyable moments. That is incredibly powerful for parents. Sometimes you hear, “I can see that that parent is doing it, but my child doesn’t sit still for a second.” When you see that you are doing it and you are seeing it light up your child’s face, those moments are magical for parents. We know from the video feedback work we have used in other studies delivered through health visiting settings and other work on children’s mental health from infancy through to age seven that that can have a long-term benefit. Although that is an extra offer, there is huge evidence to support why it might be particularly valuable for families with extra needs. We need a range of different things that we can offer in Best Start family hubs to reach all the families who might benefit from book sharing.

Just out of interest, is that video feedback a pilot or is it quite well established?

We have been working on it since 2020 and are currently doing work funded by the Nuffield Foundation around scaling it. That is the work we have been doing about making evidence work as well—to look at where those opportunities are and make it viable for commissioning.

There is huge capacity for family hubs to be a very radical policy solution and a new part of our public service. Family hubs, as distinct from children’s centres, are still a relatively new policy area. Where they become radical is when we start to take a more holistic view around parents and families, rather than just a singular focus on children, and think more widely about how we can support parents, in this case, but also families more widely. Obviously, every family is different. The capacity to lean into the family hubs agenda to provide support to families in a place on your doorstep or relatively locally, where parents—particularly new parents—can come together, is potentially very powerful in policy terms. But there has to be a space to support parents, too. That is the missing ingredient—the critical element of a family hub as distinct from what went before. I might also add that there is clearly a conversation to be had around dads reading to their children, particularly pre-school children—very young children. Historically, family hubs have struggled to get dads through the door. They remain a hard-to-reach group. There is a lot more we can do to encourage dads to read to their children at whatever age, but particularly when they are very young.

I will pick up on the difficulty of getting men in. Children and family centres have been having sessions just for the dads. They call them Saturdads, or something like that. That is very effective. Sometimes the dads do not come in because they feel outnumbered by the women, because it is usually women. One children’s centre that I worked with had a dog, because when the men came in and dropped their children off, they patted and had an interaction with the dog and it kind of relaxed them. I thought that was quite interesting, a bit of a left-field idea. Other times, they have just invited men into a session to do things with their children. It might be den building, and then you can make up stories about the dens and what is happening in the dens through the play that is happening. You can make books from the play that the children are engaging with. By bringing the parents into the session, they are seeing good interactions modelled by professionals who really know what they are doing, because the basis of early reading is relationships and interactions. They are learning in the context of the wider world, to go back to the literacy club, so if parents are not confident then, as we have talked about, we need to build the confidence of parents. When that happens, as Christine said, joy is infectious: if the children are loving it, the parents will love it, and then it becomes much more and it grows. I have talked about the after-school club. We use different words—Best Start family hubs or children and family centres—but we are all talking about the same thing really: it is a place where families get a lot of support, to go back to the Sure Start idea. They are places where staff are well trained and experienced. A local children’s centre offers cover to nurseries and pre-schools so that their staff can come out and do some training on interactions and other necessary things, because private nurseries and pre-schools sometimes cannot afford to send their staff on training. They cannot afford to cover for them, so that is a way that they support them to be able to go on training. They provide training themselves. They also provide training for parenting programmes, and they support other practitioners to go on training.

Is it okay to come in on the point about fathers?

Briefly.

I just want to say that I think that that is very important—that it is a hugely relational practice. Our qualitative research with fathers—through interviewing them—suggests that they are attracted to opportunities for bonding, but that they might need some help with the initiative and the invitation to do book sharing at home. I have been impressed with the work that Dad Matters have been doing through Home-Start to find dads where they are in the community. I think there are huge opportunities as well for us to make this something concrete. For fathers, it is a clear signal to take the book and it is something that you can do in the home with your little one in a relational, fun way.

What role should early years settings and practitioners play in developing an enjoyment of reading books among young children? We have heard a fair bit about this already, but are there any other aspects of it? What does really good practice look like in early years settings?

I think practice is similar in terms of what we see with caregivers. It is about relational, explorative, interactive moments around books, and that is not necessarily intuitive, in terms of how you can pick up a book and not just read it to a child. Children do enjoy being read to, so I think there is probably a skills need in terms of building capacity in the workforce. We also need continuity in the workforce. If we have turnover in workforce capacity in early years settings, that is a real barrier to good practice, particularly in group-based care. We have seen that in the NFER report earlier this year. So I think that is a barrier. Also, books need to be in lots of different places and not just in those moments where children might be being read to or being read with. If we look at what matters to children, they want unhurried time with books in a range of different settings. They want to explore them with their peers. They want to have alone time and to explore books on their own terms as well, so we need that capacity building around what good practice looks like across the early years settings. I am sure Julie has a lot to add to that.

I echo the idea of having books everywhere. That is partly because children want to go into little den spaces and look at books. It is also about linking books with their play, because that is how children learn. It gives it a purpose. For example, if children are building a vehicle with tyres and planks, have car manuals in a box at the side. If they are building with blocks, have books about building nearby. Have books in the home corner. Have books that link with children’s play everywhere and have exciting and inviting book areas. Children like to go into hidden spaces. They will go under a table or behind a bush or sofa to read a book. That needs to be possible. Another important aspect is the environmental print that children see around them, because becoming a reader is about more than just looking at books; it is about accessing print for meaning as well. That means looking at the print that is in the environment and making sure that it has meaning for the children. That can be photos of the children in their play with a commentary about what they are doing by the adults or the child’s words about what they were doing in speech bubbles. Children can then look at those with their parents or carers. An early years setting is a workshop space, and everything needs to be there for a purpose. It should not just be the technical stuff, such as lists of tricky words. Books need to be made with children. They need to be given plenty of opportunities to write, not just their own stories, but books about things they are interested in. They need to be able to print those out and put them in an authors’ area where the children can go and look at the books together, on their own or with a family member. I do not know if you have come across helicopter stories. Children write a story that is scribed by an adult and then act the story out at the end of the session. That is a really popular way of getting children to write their own stories. It gives the link between writing and reading, because obviously a story that is written has to be read. Children will be much more interested in reading something that they have written themselves than something that a teacher has pulled off a bookshelf. We can give them cameras so that they can go out and take pictures and make their own books. By giving children the core books, they can absorb the language of good books and use that when they start to make up their own stories. You will hear the repetitive story language coming through their own stories—I can talk for a long time.

What do we know about how widespread this good practice is? Do we know whether most early years settings have good practice in this area?

It depends on what you call an early years setting. In reception, it is harder now because they have a lot more pressure to do the phonics work. Literacy may involve half an hour for phonics. Some children who are not getting it may have to spend longer doing the same activity to get it, and it can be seen as a punishment. Somebody who works in a children’s centre said that a child came out of a phonics session and said, “I’ve worked really hard today. I don’t want to do any more hard work.” The person said, “Come on, let’s read a story together.” It is about the children who are not getting the reading easily—teachers are being pressured to get children moving through the phonics schemes and it is putting pressure on practitioners and children. There is really good practice—excellent practice—but it is harder for practitioners to put it into practice, and it is coming into pre-schools as well.

Christine, what about younger age groups in nursery settings and so forth? What do we know about the quality of reading for pleasure there?

I am trying to think of large-scale studies that have looked at differences in quality and of contemporary research. We certainly have that from previous studies that have used quality assessments, such as “ECERS-E”, which is Kathy Sylva’s work. I am trying to think of contemporary practice. There is interesting work happening on the baby room, also funded by the Nuffield Foundation, called the baby room project, which is specifically looking at raising good practice in interactions around babies. It will be interesting to see what comes out of that work, because developmentally it is different. We know that when good practice happens, in terms of having those slow-paced environments, noticing what a baby is noticing and sharing that attention, it is literally building the infrastructure around children’s language development and their brains. There is a lot of developmental science from Sam Wass and others about what is happening in those high-quality interactions, but, to be able to tell you from large-scale research what that looks like, I think we might have to wait for some contemporary research around it.

Could you tell us what kind of training you think early years practitioners currently receive on reading for pleasure and what more might be needed?

I am bit out of date; my time in teacher training was quite a few years ago. I have seen a big shift in the requirement to teach phonics schemes, so reading has become that. I hope that they are getting an understanding of all the absolutely necessary experiences that children must have before they can become readers. I don’t know if you have come across the image of a literacy iceberg, where the bit of the iceberg above the sea is reading the book and decoding words, but beneath the sea, there are a vast number of experiences that children have from birth onwards that build the dispositions and motivations to become readers, and the understanding of books and what literacy, reading and writing is all about. I hope that that is happening, and I think that the balance has probably shifted away from that to being about mindsets, so that children develop the belief that they can be learners and that if they can’t do something, they just can’t do it yet, rather than that they can’t do it because they are not clever enough. We need a much broader definition of reading than decoding words—the early learning goal is about decoding, but I can’t tell you if that is actually happening at the moment.

I ought to be careful to stay in my lane a bit, but I think there is always a danger that institutions, particularly education institutions, forget the home environment and that parents can be an enormous support for children. At any age, one of the big gaps we see in teaching, rather than the early years, is around training for working with parents. The work we and others have done has demonstrated that teachers typically get very little training throughout their careers on how to work with parents and handle parents in some cases, and that is a very obvious gap for policy.

I am certainly happy to submit additional evidence, because it would be interesting to look at the work of Sandra Mathers in Oxford on this, and also colleagues in the PGCE around teacher training. The way in is probably around language and literacy, and there is a gap in training around book sharing for pleasure in early years training, especially for professionals that fall outside teacher training. I imagine that there is a gap in terms of training and capacity building specifically on that, rather than books, as a means to literacy and language attainment.

I would like to talk about phonics for a moment. We know, and you have said, that consistent early exposure to books rather than infrequent reading is crucial, not just for closing the vocabulary gap but for achieving better at school, and for lifelong upward social mobility. Do you think that the focus in early years settings should be on reading to children and ensuring that they develop a habit of reading for pleasure, rather than focusing on phonics, especially when the Committee has already heard that that is not always developmentally appropriate for the youngest children at nursery?

From a developmental perspective, it is about instilling a joy of books—a joy of texts—and creating habits for children so that they want to go back to them and bring caregivers, be it in that early years setting or in the home, into those interactions. In terms of those pre-literacy abilities around phonics, all of that will follow. If children are interested in texts, they will come back and, when they are developmentally ready, they will seek those experiences out. Children are very good at seeking out that next step in their learning when they are ready, but if they do not have the confidence and familiarity, and do not see themselves as users of books in their home environment, that will become much more difficult. In terms of developmental appropriateness, there is a different way in for younger children, particularly in the very early years.

Again, I have to be careful not to step outside my experience, but there is a distinction between reading done in the classroom and learning to read, which will give children opportunities later in their childhood and adulthood, and reading for fun or leisure at home. That is about, particularly at a very young age, holding and experiencing a book, and some of the joy—dare I say—of that, particularly in competition with some of the modern temptations of childhood. The more we inoculate that in the home environment, the better for children as they grow up and into adulthood.

We definitely need to look at the below-the-iceberg experiences that children need. We used to have that with Letters and Sounds—I do not know if you know that, but it was used widely in schools. Phase one was phonological awareness it was rhymes and word games. Children were playing with language and becoming confident playing with language. It was really good. That tended to be in pre-schools, nurseries and, to some extent, in reception, because at that point there was less pressure on reception teachers to teach reading formally.

Do you think that is too early?

Yes, I do. Some children can do it, and that is fine. It is not that we should stop children learning to read formally, but they do not need to be. Children should have all the rich experiences and the joyful experiences—we need to keep that word “joy” in this. We want children to be motivated to read, first of all. The main thing is that they have to be self-motivated. If they are self-motivated, they develop confidence. A motivated and confident child will learn the skills they need. If you take children swimming and they splash around in the water, they will start to learn to swim. You do not teach children to swim by putting them on dry land learning swimming strokes. It sometimes feels like we are doing that with phonics, with some children. It is decontextualised and it is away from anything that has meaning for them. A big part of that is with parents, because the majority of the child’s life is spent with the parents. It involves all the things we have talked about regarding building parents’ confidence and understanding of how to interact with the children, and being able to choose their own books. Some of the decoding books that children use are quite dire. I have read them with children and we have looked at each other at the end and gone, “What’s that about?” It does not have a decent story. It is just a lot of words put together. It has got a bit of a story, but not much. I am not saying that they are not helpful at times; they have a place, but I think it has become too big a place and too big a pressure. The phonics schemes—the commercial schemes—have taken much too big a place, and teachers are getting monitored on how they are teaching those schemes. People are coming in and saying they need to hold the flashcards up in a particular way and that they need to be making eye contact. What they are being told is very technical, and it is not joy. [Interruption.] Am I going on too long?

We are just coming to the end of this session, so we probably need to stop there. Sorry to cut you off.

No, absolutely; you have to stop me.

I will say what I always say, but it might be particularly relevant in this case. If there were points that you felt you were not able to get across in the time that we had, please write to the Committee afterwards; we would really welcome that. Professor O’Farrelly, I think you had a couple of academic papers that might be of interest as well. It has been a genuinely fascinating session and very helpful for our inquiry, so thank you all very much for coming to give your evidence to us today. Witnesses: Victoria Dilly, Professor Robert Eaglestone and Dr Roger McDonald.

I welcome our second panel of witnesses for our evidence session on reading for pleasure. I invite each of our witnesses to introduce themselves.

I am an associate professor at the University of Greenwich. I am proud to be representing the UKLA and the Open University. I co-lead the reading for pleasure quality mark with them, with Professor Teresa Cremin from the Open University.

I am chief executive at the School Library Association—a charity membership organisation with an almost 90-year history of supporting everybody working in schools to deliver high-quality library provision. We believe that access to a good school library will help all children to achieve better outcomes. I have worked in education for 20 years, and I spent 10 years as a school librarian working in state and independent schools with children aged three to 18.

I am Robert Eaglestone. I am a professor of contemporary literature and thought at Royal Holloway, University of London, and I am the policy lead for the English Association. The English Association, which was founded in 1906 and incorporated by royal charter in 2006, has a unique role because we pull together primary, secondary, FE and higher education, and through our publications, events and networks, we promote dialogue, share expertise and celebrate our discipline.

Thank you all for being here. You will have heard a bit in the previous session about the tension around the need to teach children how to read and fostering the love of reading, which is what we are focused on in this inquiry. My first question to each of you is: how do schools encourage and promote reading for pleasure, and how effective are they at doing that within the current policy and resourcing environment that they work in?

In my experience, strategies around reading for pleasure in school, particularly in secondary school, tend to be a bit inconsistent, if I am honest. They work with limited resources and an overcrowded curriculum and timetable, and have very little time for independent reading. Very often, that takes place in form time or during “drop everything and read” moments in the day. If they are fortunate, there might be an awareness day that they can engage with, like one of the big national celebrations such as World Book Day, although that is less the case in secondary compared with primary. In primary school, there is a bit more time because more teachers are involved in reading for pleasure. In secondary school, it is much more subject facing. If I am honest, the most successful strategies are focused on having a school library and a school librarian to lead those initiatives. One of the things I was reflecting on when I was listening to the previous panel is that there was a lot of conversation about children not having the positive experiences that we might want them to as they are growing up before they get to school. When they get to school and come into a school library, it might be the first time they have ever come across that many books in one room. It might also be the first time they experience the joy that we associate with reading, because they may not have necessarily had that at home. Therefore, reading for pleasure in school is so important because, if you like, we are filling a gap in providing something that these young people have not had before they get to school. Having said that, there are some wonderful initiatives going on in schools all over the country, and we know that many teachers and school librarians are delivering really positive impacts, but they are really under-resourced.

From the work that we have done, the most effective schools have a sustained culture of RFP that is shaped by their beliefs, values and habits. Around the culture, we can think about coherence, so it is within their school development plan or their reading for pleasure action plan. They also have connections with the pupils, parents and staff, and reading for pleasure is embedded across those. There is also consequence, so the schools are actively evaluating what they do and seeing what the impact has been. One of the other features is that it is not an activity. I think the danger of talking about RFP is that we could go down an activity route, where we give schools a range of things to do, and they then tick those and say, “Right, we’ve now done it.” It is not that. These schools are focusing on their culture of reading for pleasure, and they are thinking about it in a social way and, as we heard before, the way it builds relationships. The teachers need to know the books, and they also need to know the children. This was picked up by Professor Teresa Cremin in the first panel last month, when she talked about how these schools understand the difference between teaching reading and developing a reader, and I think that is a key part of the work around RFP. Finally, what we have found with our schools is that they really understand what RFP is. They know what they are aiming for with the children, and they want their children to be purposeful in their choice of books to read, so that they can anticipate the joy and satisfaction that they will get. They know they want that, so they then plan how they are going to get there—or how they are going to nurture that time for individual choice.

I agree with lots of the things that the other panellists have said. There is work by Sarah McGeown that evaluates the different strategies, such as independent reading, the whole class reading aloud or reading lessons in the library, as has been said, as well as non-curricular approaches, such as reading clubs and things like World Book Day. Again, what underlies them all is talking about books and reading. I think the whole school ethos is really important, as well as improving the students’ motivation for reading. I also want to add something that has been missing from much of the research: English as a discipline. Of course, English as a discipline is about reading and pleasure in reading, and one of the things that is often missed is the fact that the curriculum in English has quite often got in the way of encouraging reading for pleasure and encouraging people to become readers. The dialogic teaching that characterises the best English teaching is also something that schools do to support reading for pleasure, in addition to the things that you have pointed out.

We have initiatives such as the English hubs programme and the Transforming Schools Reading Culture programme. Given the evidence that the Committee has heard about the enormous benefits of reading for pleasure, including empathy, language development and managing and regulating emotions—there are all sorts of fantastic benefits that support other aspects of children’s learning—is it your view that we are missing a trick by allowing it to be crowded out in the way that some of you have described? What do you think about the success of those programmes? Does more need to happen within the structure of the curriculum and the structure of the school day to make space for those enormous benefits to come through?

I know through the English hubs that they focus a lot on the phonics agenda, and they do that extremely well. They also focus on RFP—I work with one of the English hubs in the south-east, which has RFP and does training for that. Your point about it being squeezed out is really important. In my experience of working with schools, they are so focused on teaching children to read that the RFP part of things gets moved out, so anything that the Committee could do to strengthen time, or to protect time, would be welcome. Our schools, for the quality mark, protect reading for pleasure. That goes throughout the different subjects that they teach—as I said, it is part of the culture of the school. I think that is something that schools need to make the time for, but with everything that teachers are up against, in a sense—the accountability and the performance nature of some of the testing that children have to do—it does get moved out.

I am not an expert in English hubs. However, in the past six months, we as an organisation have done some work with Springhill English hub in Southampton, working with them on a silver level reading award that which focuses on pupil engagement and the role of pupils in school as ambassadors. We co-developed a training day for pupil librarians to come along. We are looking at that—it went well and was successful, but it was really about encouraging young people to engage with reading, and how they can have that sense of peer-to-peer recommendation. To add to your first question, but also on the notion of making room for different initiatives, when you have a school library at the heart of your reading for pleasure strategy and a school librarian in post, then that librarian with their training and knowledge can look across the curriculum and think about ways to make links between each subject, while also being that expert in the room on reading to help teachers develop their knowledge of children’s literature and books. That means that when teachers are doing tutor time reading—if that is their chosen method—the librarian can come alongside them and help to recommend different engagement strategies and how to engage teenagers and young people in reading, which can be a challenge, as we know. I think that the best investment of time and energy is to focus on what your school library can bring into the school space, but that is also what your librarian is empowered to do, alongside working collaboratively with the teachers.

You have heard already quite a lot about the overemphasis on phonics in key stages 1 and 2. I am not an expert in key stages 1 and 2, but in key stages 3 and 4, I think that there is also a similar problem of crowding out. In English, there is the “teach to the test” form of curriculum at key stages 3 and 4 particularly; what the CAR described as the very “dry” curriculum for English literature; and, most importantly, those forms of pedagogy that have dominated teaching English in schools generally in the past 10 or 15 years or so—knowledge-rich and mastery teaching. I think that those forms of pedagogy, for reasons I can explain later perhaps, have driven out reading for pleasure and the wider kind of reading and becoming a reader that English as a discipline and reading for pleasure should engender.

My first question is to Dr McDonald. Will you tell us about the reading for pleasure quality mark awarded to schools? For example, what key features are seen in schools that are awarded higher levels?

I would love to—thank you so much. The reading for pleasure quality mark is a research-informed and mentored process. It was developed by the Open University and UKLA. It helps schools to claim the position that they have now for where reading for pleasure is within their schools. It uses a research-informed framework that is underpinned by international research and put together by the Open University. Within the quality mark are six strands with 38 questions about schools’ focus on RFP—whether it is developed, embedded or enriched within the school. Our submission was about schools that have reading for pleasure either enriched or embedded within their schools. We found that a feature of those schools, as I intimated earlier, was the sustained leadership commitment. In all those schools, it was part of the culture. Often, those schools had been on the reading for pleasure journey, if you like, for between five and nine years, so it was something that they had been working on for some time. They showed that it was impactful. It was also within their school development plans and within their English reading for pleasure action plans. Those schools took that agenda a long time ago and have been working with it. They also make sure that they ringfence budget for texts, so they make sure that they stay up to date with the texts and that there is a budget available for that. As I said, they also see the difference between teaching children to read and RFP, and are focusing on the RFP agenda as well. We have found that, where leadership sustains RFP over time, it then becomes a cultural aspect, so it is not dependent on individuals. Other positives from the schools are teachers’ knowledge of texts as well as of the children. The schools invest in teachers’ knowledge and understanding of children’s books. So much of what we do within primary education is to tell children to do everything; we bring an idea in and we say, “Right, this is now on you. You have to do that.” Again, that is the danger with RFP: that we bring a set of activities in and tell the children to do them. Our work is around the focus and onus actually being on the teacher. Teachers need to know a range of books—they have to know books. You are therefore thinking about a diverse set of texts that reflect not only the class or the school, but society as a whole. By doing that, the children start to see, hear and feel themselves within books. There is a range of wonderful ones. “Ghost Boys”, for example, is absolutely fantastic. Children can hear and see themselves, and some of their experiences, in that book. “When Stars Are Scattered” is a wonderful graphic novel in which children can hear about life within a refugee camp. With those sorts of texts, children are able to experience those things, and teachers can then make targeted book recommendations. For example, in one class, a child comes up to the teacher and says, “I don’t like reading. I don’t know what to read.” That teacher says, “Oh, Billy, go and choose a book from the blue box.” Billy goes over and just picks out a book from the blue box, and that is it. In another classroom, the child comes up and says, “I don’t know what to read. I don’t like reading.” The teacher knows that child, and knows that they love football or dance or whatever it is, so can pick a book for that child based on what they like. The teacher would know that book and would say, “Billy, come and have a look at this book. When you get to chapter two, I would love to know what you think, because I was amazed.” That child takes that book home and then comes back the next day. You can see where the social, relational aspects start to come about there. So, the teachers need to know books, and they need to know the children as well. That is what our schools had. As well as that, those schools protect time. That goes back to your point around the crowded curriculum. They protect time for reading every day. I talk to my university students as they go out into schools, and I say, “Read to your children every day. You must. You’ve got to do that.” The schools also have CPD in how to read aloud. Reading aloud is a skill. It is something to practise. They also make sure, again, that the teacher does not just pick up any book to read to the class. “Why have you picked that book at that moment for those children?” They have high-quality texts that they choose. Pupil voice is also really important. Again, it is not a book that the teacher has just chosen; in the schools that we worked in, the pupils had choice over the books. Then you have books in common. At times, if you just read a book, then it is lost. However, if I read one of these books to us now, we could all have a conversation about it when we go out afterwards—the characters, where it took place and your feelings about it. You are then starting to jump into that text. Our schools also had highly visible, accessible and inviting book spaces. We are moving away from the idea of a traditional book corner to a social reading environment that is both social and physical. That is a space or spaces in which children can also talk about their texts. We also have libraries, which I know Victoria will pick up on. Our schools had active social hubs and pupils were involved in those. Finally, on social reader relationships, RFP was part of the fabric of the school, in which the willingness to read was leading the skill rather than the other way around.

Your evidence states that fewer than 70 schools have achieved or are working towards the quality mark. How can that work be scaled up so that more schools are allowed to implement the best practice?

Advertise it, please! It is for schools that have already developed RFP and got to a standard. It is not a CPD programme or anything like that. There is brilliant CPD work from the Open University reading schools programme, for example. The UKLA and the OU have over 600 teacher reading groups as well. There is lots of work going on. The quality mark is for schools that can claim that they have reading for pleasure developed across the criteria I spoke about. We had lots of schools—100 or so—come to the briefing. Of those, we take around 20 or 25 each year.

We have heard that much of the research on best practice currently focuses on primary schools. What should secondary schools be doing to address the decline in reading for pleasure?

That is a good question. I am not sure that I can give it a very full answer. I think the answer is improving the curriculum for English. There are also the things that we have already talked about: libraries, the whole school ethos, and talking about books and reading. Those would be my things, but I am not sure that I can answer more fully than that.

Some 73% of children and young people who use the school library have better levels of reading enjoyment, reading for pleasure and reading confidence and attainment than those who do not—that is the finding of one research report. I would add to Roger’s wonderful description that that is what a school librarian does and is trained to do. It is exactly as Roger described: being knowledgeable about texts, and building an understanding of the young people that you are working with, so that you can recommend with insight, see where they are at in their reading journey and recommend the right book at the right moment. To be effective that must come from the top down. Senior leadership needs to be 100% behind you and your school library if it is going to be successful and have an impact—and it will have an impact if funded, supported and enabled to deliver reading for pleasure and collaborate with teaching colleagues. Importantly, they must also be able to have an input into strategy. We recommend, where possible, that your librarian be a middle manager within your school setup so that they can have direct input into conversations with senior members of different departments and describe how reading for pleasure can be done effectively across all subjects. I know that I said that before, but it is worth repeating. Successful strategies should absolutely not just be one-off initiatives. The solution should be regular library lessons and opportunities for children to come and develop positive experiences with books. You might want to put some framing around that. At one school, I worked with the lead practitioner for English, and we developed a series of lesson activities based on reader development. It looked at different areas of literature and approaches, including looking maybe at graphic novels. We ran 30 lessons a fortnight with key stage 3 to really embed the notion that reading was something that they could do and perhaps enjoy—that makes a difference. One of the other things is that we have 21 years of evidence from our secondary school librarian of the year award, which points to successful strategies to promote reading and the role of the library in that. Our current recipient has worked incredibly hard at Northampton International Academy, which has about 2,000 students in an area with high levels of free school meals and deprivation, and a large proportion of students with SEND. She sees approximately 1,000 students a fortnight coming through her two libraries and has done amazing work. I would be happy to submit more evidence, with case studies from our secondary school librarians of the year. That is just the tip of the iceberg. We support hundreds of librarians who are doing such work to help children and young people to reach their full potential.

One thing we talked about a little is student choice. One thing the research shows is that teaching students to choose, informing them and making them more agentic choosers of books is also an extremely effective strategy.

The core principles are the same between primary and secondary. What I spoke about in relation to the quality mark schools transfers over. It is about children and teachers having time, being able to talk about texts and having a range of choice. Again, it is about teachers knowing the books for their young people within secondary school, and about the social aspects of reading as well. Of course, there are challenges in secondary schools, and the schools we work with through the quality mark identify those as well, particularly around fragmented timetables. The way timetables work is a massive shift from primary to secondary, isn’t it? It is also about ensuring RFP is not seen as the English department, which is really hard. How does it become not the possession of the English department, but a culture across the school?

How can schools improve their support for children with SEND to read for pleasure? Victoria, you mentioned some of the great work that school librarians do.

Yes, I will explain through the lens of the school library. In any school library collection, you will have a number of books and resources that cater for children with special needs. They might be dyslexia-friendly texts with specific font styles, shorter reads, audiobooks, or e-books. Those are really important aspects of provision for children who might have a learning need. You also might work directly with the SEND department. Anecdotally, we have one librarian who does some amazing work with her SEND department, and that has been transformational for those young people in developing their confidence and making them feel like readers. Part of the challenge in getting over the barriers to reading is that they do not feel like readers. This year we have launched a reader of the year award, which directly celebrates a young person overcoming challenges to discover a love of reading. It is about using your collection and development knowledge as a librarian to think about what kinds of books are going to grab interest, and then ensuring that your colleagues and fellow teachers are aware of them, so that when they are working with young people, they know that there is access in the library to supporting resources.

Our schools focus on the lowest 20%, and they have to show what impact they have had with those children. One of the themes that comes out is not seeing what the children cannot do, but seeing what they can do. Just as Victoria spoke about, it is about expanding, in a sense, what you perceive reading to be. Do we know those children? Have we got the books that those children can access? Do those books reflect the children’s lives? Do they reflect the things that they are interested in? Have they got someone to talk to about those books? It could be that some of the children in the lowest 20% feel that they are not readers. How do we change their identity? We read every day; we are reading now. We are reading everyone’s body language—the way in which we are. We are always reading. It is not just about the print on the background.

You have set out an incredibly compelling case for the benefits of reading for pleasure. Of course, much of that depends on the key role of teachers. Some of the evidence that has been submitted to us talks about how some teachers lack knowledge of current children’s literature, and many claim not to be familiar with evidence on some of the best practice for delivering this. What is your view on teacher training and development, and how, if at all, should that be improved? What should it look like?

I work in teacher training, and one of the key things would be to start there and look at the core content framework. That is the framework that we have, and we use it to teach the students. There is a real focus on teaching the skill of reading within the core content framework, or the ITTECF. Within that, it mentions reading in 16 related areas, but only one of them is about RFP, so you can see where the emphasis is. The teaching of new teachers within teacher training is more focused on the skills base. You have to find the space in your teaching timetable to make sure you are embedding RFP, rather than having it as a one-off, “We are doing RFP for this session in this term, and that’s it.” You have to have it as part of something incremental and developmental throughout your students’ time. I am proud to say that our university is, I think, one of the only ones that had RFP mentioned in its most recent Ofsted, because we had it throughout the students’ time with us. Within schools, it is about having focused CPD—we were talking about this outside—and not one-off events, if you want impactful CPD that is in line with the school’s development plan and is followed through for impact. Of course, you can have one-off events. You could get someone to come in and do an RFP day with your staff, but that will not have the impact unless it is followed through and unless teachers really work on developing it within their classrooms. You must also make sure that you have a budget. If we are talking about teachers’ knowledge of texts, there should be a budget so that schools can access that.

I have several things to say. Interestingly, in my experience, looking at it through the lens of the school library, often when NQTs come into school, they have not experienced a fully fledged, functioning library in their own childhood journey through education. When I met them, I would make a point of introducing myself and saying, “Come and see the library,” and it would be fairly new to them. We must think about the school library as a resource and a support for them, in terms of not only curriculum delivery but also expanding their knowledge and helping them to become teachers who read more. A lot of people do not necessarily read and, again, it is about an adult role modelling reading. It is thinking about that and how we embed it at the start of a career. It is really interesting, and we will be doing some work later in the year with a group of trainee teachers to pilot an approach to delivering a workshop and some training on how to embed the school library in your practice, and how to think about themselves as readers, so that when they go into a school after qualifying, they have it embedded in their thinking straight away—the earlier, the better. When they are in school, the school librarian can lead on training NQTs and supporting general CPD in and around reading for pleasure, because they do it all the time. That is a really important and useful resource. It will save you a bit of money on your training as well, because you have that expert in-house. When training is offered in school around reading for pleasure, the school librarian should also be able to take advantage of that training to develop their practice.

I do not have much to add. The discipline of English is dialogic and based on personal response. That has to be emphasised and made clear in the teaching of English teachers, away from some of the things that have overcrowded it. When teachers talk about books, it has to be authentic, relatable and not just what the exam wants. They have to draw out things in dialogue with the students and from their own experience. That orientation in teacher training is important.

When I visit my local schools, particularly my local primary schools, I see teachers working really hard both to pick exciting class texts to read with children and to foster reading for pleasure. Those are, of course, two distinct things, and our inquiry is very deliberately looking at reading for pleasure. What influence does the curriculum and the way that reading is taught as a skill have on reading for pleasure?

In the last few years, the secondary curriculum—which is the one I know most about—has had a deleterious influence on reading for pleasure. You can see that in the decline we all know about. The curriculum has become increasingly narrow. It is being taught with a pedagogy that is inimical to reading for pleasure, to personal response and to authentic response. It is being taught to the test and to high-stakes assessment. I think that the English curriculum, bizarrely, has worked against reading for pleasure, despite the hard work of teachers and librarians. There should now be a chance to try to adjust that to some degree in responding to the curriculum and assessment review.

How do we get the balance right between making sure that we are teaching reading proficiency—the close reading skills that are really important—while also encouraging reading for pleasure? What are some of the things we can do to fix the problem you have identified?

The curriculum and assessment review talks about children seeing themselves in the texts, so one is widening out the curriculum and widening out, enabling and supporting student choice of a wider collection of books. Another is bringing forward a sense of personal response and dialogue. Particularly in the secondary curriculum, those things have taken a back seat to things like context and knowing the right answers. We need to understand English as not a hierarchical but a cumulative subject. It is a subject in which everything happens at once and you respond to it at once, and it works through discussion and debate rather than through a hierarchical one-thing-at-a-time system. We need pedagogical ways to do that. However, that is not addressing the primary curriculum, which was the core of your question, wasn’t it?

No, that was just an example. You have addressed the core of my question but, Victoria, do you want to add anything?

This is possibly side-stepping a little bit, but we understand that reading for pleasure has a positive impact on attainment. That has always been the challenge. In having lessons in the library, we are taking young people off the curriculum and, of course, the argument has always been, “Well, actually, no, we’re not. We’re giving them time to read for pleasure, which has a really positive impact on the curriculum.” As an example of that, last year, working in partnership with HarperCollins, we trialled an approach called social reading spaces to engage year 8 readers and to reignite their love of reading. It was deliberately designed to tap into a moment in the teenage reading journey when there is the steepest decline—in year 8, when adolescence kicks in. It involved taking small groups out of the classroom, so very deliberately not adding it as an enrichment activity but within the school day, and bringing them to the library to provide them with really exciting books and resources, and a focused book club with no remit to read. The opportunity was to explore stories, to explore books and to talk about books, which as we have heard is really important. Some of the librarians involved in leading the book groups—they all led them slightly differently, interpreting it based on their skill and knowledge of the young people in front of them—took it upon themselves to test the young people’s reading age before and after. After just 12 weeks of intervention, some of their reading ages had improved by as much as 15 months. We have now redeveloped it, and we are launching a programme in the summer called Reading Reboot. It will run from September for three years, thanks to generous funding from the Charlotte Aitken Trust, reaching about 7,000 young people in 100 schools. We believe it is a really exciting opportunity to do something that will re-engage year 8 readers, target the crisis in their steep decline, and give them an opportunity to re-engage with reading.

It is really good to hear about a school where you have seen really good reading practice, Mr Swallow. It is about trying to get a balance, like you said. This is not teachers’ fault, as they are just responding to policy. The balance across policy is towards reading instruction. Although reading for pleasure is in the national curriculum—so it is mandated—it is there once. There is much more focus on reading instruction. It uses the “simple view of reading” idea. You then have the phonics check in year 1, which schools perceive to be a high-stakes test. In some schools, it skews the teaching. That means that in the foundation stage, as we heard from the previous panel, and in year 1 and again in year 2 for children who have not made the mark, the pedagogy—the way of teaching—is focused on a skills-based approach, so it is on SSP. Again, that is mandated through universities. In universities, we are not able to talk about other ways of teaching reading; we have to talk about SSP. It is being introduced in a way that says, “This is the one way to teach children to read,” and it has stopped any other talk and other ways of teaching children to read. Within schools, teachers are just responding to that, so they are teaching it in early years and key stage 1. In key stage 2, we have the reading test. Yesterday, all our year 6s sat a SATs reading test. We could debate what that word means: is it really reading? Are they really doing a reading test? I would say no, they are not. They are doing a comprehension test; they are possibly doing an endurance test; and they are doing a race. They have to answer so many questions in a certain amount of time, so they do not have time to think and reflect. A SATs paper can have up to 2,300 words in the part that children read, and a further 1,300 in the questions. There are a lot of words for children to read. That, again, can skew the teaching. I know lots of year 6 classes where the last few weeks have been SATs practice for maths, reading and SPaG. The teaching—the pedagogy within schools—is responding to policy. That is all it is doing. The teachers are not wrong; they are not bad teachers. They are just responding to what they feel they have to do. They are then trying to find space for RFP, and that is done this week or in the last month in year 6 as, “Let’s squeeze it into the afternoon,” or something like that. There could be a way that the panel could bring RFP much more to the fore within policy. It is in the reading framework, which is great, although it is not statutory. It could be brought in as something that schools have to do, even within the inspection. “Where is reading for pleasure and thinking about that?”

That is really fascinating, but I am going to have to ask for slightly shorter answers in the remainder of the session so we can get through everything, if that is okay.

Professor Eaglestone, you have already referred to the curriculum and assessment review, and there were a number of recommendations relating to the English curriculum in the final report last year, including the grammar content, the oracy framework and the content of the English Language GCSE. What is your response to these recommendations? What else would you like to have seen in the curriculum and assessment review?

The oracy framework is good. The trouble with the CAR was that what it gave you with one hand it took away with the other, and there are a couple of relevant examples of that. One is about diversity. The CAR says that we should allow more children to see themselves in the curriculum—in the books they choose and so on—because that has been found to support students’ engagement. So it says, “More diversity,” but then when it comes down to the details in terms of reading, and particularly in the GCSE, it takes away the room for that. In the GCSE English Literature, for example, it keeps more or less exactly the same four elements that were there before: 19th-century novel, Shakespeare, some poetry and drama from the British isles, and one bit of more contemporary stuff. There is no room for the diversity that it wants. It is a kind of gridlock. In relation to that matter, I would recommend that the 19th-century novel requirement that the CAR liked should be taken away, or extended to a much longer period—19th century to 1960 or 19th century to 2000. The CAR talks about literature from the British isles, so it offers you diversity—the whole range of literature in English—and then takes it away. We used to have literature in English, and I would recommend that that is what we should have again: literature in English, not literature from the British isles. The CAR talks about hierarchical and cumulative disciplines—different pedagogies for different disciplines—and then it takes that away by its insistence on mastery and knowledge-rich teaching. We know from very gold-plated research by Simon Burgess in Economics of Education Review that dialogic teaching in English gets much better GCSE results. It is really effective; I forget the figures, but it is about a 5% improvement. The kind of pedagogy that the CAR likes works well for maths and science, but does not work for English. Again, it gives you something and then takes it away. I know that the CAR does not talk about pedagogy, but I would recommend thinking about different pedagogies for different disciplines, and stressing dialogic pedagogy for English, which gives all the reading for pleasure things that we have been talking about: engagement, response, conversation and a talking ethos. Those are the two things that I would recommend in relation to the CAR. As long as the oracy works well, that will be fantastic. Did you mention the year 8 reading test?

I was just about to say: what about the year 8 reading test? What effect will that have on reading for pleasure?

The discipline is a bit divided on the year 8 reading test. Some people think it is a good idea, but more people are aware that the risk of it becoming another accountability measure is quite strong. Some people say it should be earlier. If we are trying to find problems with our students, year 7 is the place to have that test. We have talked about how reading is not just an English department thing. That is absolutely right—it is whole school—but that sounds like it is going to fall on the English department pretty heavily. It will skew the key stage 3 curriculum. Again, that is the CAR giving with one hand: for English, the CAR says, “We’ll make key stage 3 much more exciting,” or it implies that, and then it puts in this test, which is going to suck all that oxygen out. It is also not clear what kind of texts they are going to be. Are they going to be literary texts or knowledge texts? It is a complicated matter.

Do you think that having a reading test emphasises the fact that reading is work—it is a subject, it is serious, and we have to pass this test—rather than emphasising reading for pleasure?

Yes. On the other hand, research by Jessie Ricketts, who presented here, shows that teenage reading in key stage 3 is very variable. We need to know more about it, so some sort of assessment might be a good idea. But the question of the balance of the heaviness of that assessment—or how much it is going to deform and shape things—is really important.

Victoria, this is a question for you. School libraries obviously have a key role in encouraging in children a love of reading for pleasure. From your perspective, what are the challenges that school libraries face in achieving more?

There is no statutory requirement for school libraries or school librarians. Unless you have a really forward thinking headteacher who is 100% behind that, very often they are at the mercy of cost reduction strategies. We have seen some of our members made redundant, we have seen hours reduced, and some members have contacted us for advice on how to run a library with less hours, less staff and less money. We know that 15% of secondary schools have no budget; that does not mean that the other 85% have hundreds of pounds to spend because they don’t. There is no statutory requirement, no funding, and ever-tightening school budgets. There is also a problem with the perception of what a school library can do and what a school librarian can bring to a school community. A couple of years back, there was a survey of school librarians and 40% felt they were not valued in their role. That does not give you a positive picture. We want to change that perception. One of the things I have been doing in my role over the past 16 months is to start changing those narratives, which is why we are looking at programmes that drive impact and positive change. We need more understanding of how many school libraries are actually in the country. We need some data. In 2014, the APPG report, “The Beating Heart of the School”, recommended that the Government put school libraries on the census so that we can understand the picture and target our support. Aside from the in-school challenges of children engaging with reading, if you are a school librarian in a school where you are not supported or you do not have the time and money to invest in the support that you are desperate to give, it is a bit like being a doctor having the medicine and not actually being able to give it to the children. After all, we are in a reading crisis and school librarians are the specialists. When you are in a crisis you call in the specialists, so we really feel that there needs to be more support for what we are trying to do. If you do not have the funding or the budget, you cannot buy the books that attract the children to come in as readers, and you do not have the hours in the working week to support them. Libraries are often open six to eight hours a day but are staffed only 50% of that time.

That gives us a good overview.

I also have a question for Victoria, but if anyone else has comments that is fine. The Government have pledged that every primary school will get a library by the end of this Parliament. They also pledged £10 million alongside that. Is that enough money, and what impact will it have on primary schools?

It is amazing for the one in seven primaries that do not have a library. It is important to recognise the work that everyone involved in the Libraries for Primaries campaign has done to help bring that to bear, and the work of all the people who have been campaigning for school libraries for the last 20 to 25 years. Some 14%—or one in seven—of primary schools do not have a library, but of the six in seven who do, 65% do not have a budget. We need to be mindful that there is a bigger picture, and that speaks to wanting to understand what is happening across the entire school landscape. It will obviously be transformational for those primary schools that do not have a library and it is important that we target that support at those most in need. But we need to step back. Again, if there is no statutory requirement and you are in the other primary schools, how do you know that any investment that may be there is going to be applied and used? That £10 million is obviously a huge amount of money and it will go some way, however it is not long term. School libraries need investment year on year, and they need dedicated staff to run them. Training is essential and fundamental, but if there is not anybody in the school who is leading on that library and all the benefits it will bring in a dedicated way, how long before that library becomes old and unused?

I appreciate what you were saying before about there being no statutory requirement for schools to have libraries. Data needs to be collected; that has been recommended. Do you have any figures in mind about what would be required to keep the investment going and keep these libraries open so they can provide the services that you said they should provide?

To be honest, I don’t have the figures. We talked about this, and I can submit some more evidence. The costs involved are the salaries for staff, training and development, books, resources, library management systems, maintenance, seating—all those things. It isn’t cheap, but we can submit some more evidence on that.

That would be extremely welcome. Before I move on to my next question, does anyone else have any thoughts about those questions?

Can I say one thing on that? Victoria picked up on this too. Having a room of books doesn’t create readers, so we need to think about what underpins that. One school that we work with in Southampton has a brilliant library and a wonderful librarian, who is also on the senior team of the school, and that raises the importance. The librarian is part of all the conversations about books, when they are talking about the curriculum or year 6 or whatever. It is not about handing the responsibility over to someone who will be in that room; it is seeing it as the whole school’s responsibility.

Understood. I have only one other question, because you answered my third question beautifully in your first answer. In the previous Budget, the Government said that it was going to commit £5 million to secondary schools in this financial year to purchase reading books. Do you think the pledge should be broader than that? Should it actually state, “We need to make sure all secondary schools have a library”? I will start with Victoria.

Yes. It would be amazing to have a library in every secondary school—86% of secondary schools do have libraries, but the way they are funded and staffed obviously varies. When you are thinking about costs, there is some infrastructure there already. We have 2,000 members working in libraries, and about 60% of them are working in secondary schools. They are ready and waiting to have the support they need to do the job that they so love to do. We would want to consider what secondary investment would look like. What we need for all school libraries is a national library strategy and a benchmark about what good looks like. It needs monitoring so that we know it is being achieved. It should be aspirational, but we are realistic about what might be achievable as we go forward, looking at budgets and funding.

Could you provide evidence after this about the actual figures involved?

Yes.

Members of this Committee badger the Chancellor about these topics, and it is always helpful when they are armed with the figures. Are there any final thoughts?

I totally agree with what Victoria said.

This question is to Victoria. How can school libraries be a go-to place for children and teenagers who are reluctant readers, as well as for children who love reading?

School libraries are for everybody in the school community. One of the many things that school librarians are brilliant at is creating inclusive communities that are welcoming for everyone. They use their expertise to feed into collection development so that there is something for everyone. We have a wonderful quote in here somewhere. A librarian said once, “A child comes through the door, and I know exactly what to recommend. I know who they are.” It is about building relationships. That is why that dedicated member of staff is so important. We talk about teacher and student relationships in the classroom, and they are obviously hugely important. In the library, you can create rich reading environments—obviously, if they are funded—and amazing displays. You can be the knowledgeable person who can talk to them about myriad things and tap into their interests. Nationally, a reading goal in tapping into interests is really important. Libraries are also a safe space. It is really important that we recognise the role of a library as a safe space and a librarian as a trusted adult in a really busy community—any school community is obviously really busy. That role is really important for every pupil. The other thing that librarians often do is run pupil librarian schemes, so you can bring pupils in. In one of the schools that I visited last year, the librarian had 35 pupils enrolled in her pupil librarian scheme. They came at breaks and lunch time. It gave them an opportunity to develop skills and confidence, have that connection and get into reading. You build reading ambassadors like that, so then you have peer-to-peer recommendations. That is not to mention all the initiatives that they might run—book groups, book buddy schemes, and opportunities to sit in the library and talk about reading, stories or whatever else they may be interested in. A school library can meet the needs of a school community, and the needs of every pupil, wherever they happen to be on their reading journey.

Thank you very much. It has been really fascinating to hear your evidence this afternoon. We are grateful to you for coming. Please do write to us with any further pieces of information that you would like us to take account of in our inquiry. Thank you very much.