“I put up a slide about them killing the school therapy dog because of them not being able to read its medication. And that got their attention because, obviously, they’d be pretty sad if they killed the school therapy dog.”

To be clear, Estelle Bellamy, director of learning in English at Fylde Coast Academy Trust, is not a dog murderer. Rather, she is just not convinced that telling teenagers to love reading - or creating an environment aimed at making that happen - makes much difference to reading habits and, as a consequence, reading ability.

Instead, she believes that if we want to get kids reading more, we need to help them to understand the value of reading by, for example, pointing out that it could be critical for keeping their favourite dog alive.

“As an ambition for every child, the ‘reading for pleasure’ narrative is a bit of an odd idea: should everyone be doing PE for pleasure, or physics for pleasure?” Bellamy asks. “Reading is an essential skill - they have to do it - and we should be really clear that this isn’t something you have to like, but you really do have to know how important it is, and understand that we are going to get you to a level where you do it well.”

Such views appear to go against the dominant narrative of the moment: the “reading for pleasure” push is now deeply entrenched in international discussions about teaching reading.

England is at the start of a Year of Reading in which “reading for pleasure” is central. The term is also gaining increasing traction in Australia, among other countries, and there is global despair at research suggesting that young people are no longer besotted with books.

The belief is that if young people don’t love reading, they won’t read. As a result, they will be poorer readers, get poorer education outcomes and be poorer citizens.

However, Bellamy is not alone in having reservations about the role of schools and reading for pleasure in this argument. In fact, both teachers and researchers are becoming increasingly aligned on the realisation that when it comes to creating readers, we should probably not be talking about reading for pleasure in schools at all.

The phrase “reading for pleasure” has long been used to describe the habit of choosing to spend time reading and getting satisfaction out of it - with the word “pleasure” interchangeable with “enjoyment” or “joy” or various other euphemisms for “love”.

However, the connection of reading for pleasure to the teaching of reading in schools - and thus better academic outcomes - is a more recent occurrence that has seeped into official documentation gradually.

For example, in England, a 2004 Ofsted evaluation of reading made the connection using the phrase “reading for pleasure”, but the seminal 2006 Rose Report into early reading made no mention of that phrase. It did, however, suggest that “positive attitudes” to reading were beneficial.

The National Literacy Trust followed up the Rose Report with its own report the same year. This was dedicated specifically to “reading for pleasure”, defining it and arguing for its centrality to the teaching of reading in schools. A Department for Education research paper did something similar in 2012.

But it wasn’t until the national curriculum updates in 2014 that reading for pleasure officially became a job of schools in England: the English programmes of study statutory guidance stated, as its second bullet point, that “all pupils” should “develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information”.

Subsequently, everyone from Ofsted to the DfE’s English Hubs, and from charities to newspaper columnists, has implored schools to make pupils fall in love with reading. A substantial part of the argument was summed up in that 2012 research document.

“Reading enjoyment has been reported as more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socioeconomic status,” it concluded.

All of this activity to get children reading for pleasure doesn’t seem to have made a positive difference to the number of children who enjoy reading, nor how many choose to read in their own time. In fact, some sources indicate that things have got worse.

In England, the National Literacy Trust’s annual survey of children and young people’s reading habits last year found reading enjoyment at its lowest level for 20 years: just one in three children and young people aged 8 to 18 (32.7 per cent) reported enjoying reading “very much” or “quite a lot”. This is 18.7 percentage points lower than in 2005.

The research also reported that “daily reading habits among children and young people have continued to decline, reaching their lowest levels since tracking began”.

Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) data for England, meanwhile, showed that the number of nine- and 10-year-olds “reading for fun” went up in the 2011 and 2015 cycles of the study, but reduced again in 2022 - and even at the peak, the proportion was still only just a third of the age group.

Internationally, similar trends have occurred. The most recent data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) - from 2018, as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says it did not focus on reading for “enjoyment” in the 2022 iteration of the study - found that across the majority of OECD countries, the share of 15-year-old students reporting that they read for enjoyment had continually shrunk since 2000.

So what’s going wrong?

One possibility is that, while cultivating reading for pleasure is a sound ambition for schools, the pedagogy has been wrong.

Kelly Ashley, lecturer in reading for pleasure at The Open University, says there is certainly a lack of clarity over what reading for pleasure means.

As a result, schools’ work in this area often amounts to “a kind of one-off, box-ticking exercise, or it might be concentrated in certain areas of the school, like in the library or just in the English department”, she says.

Initiatives tend to coalesce around two basic objectives: providing space to read, and some guidance and/or inspiration about what to read.

So you tend to see dedicated library sessions in the timetable for exposure to books and time to explore them; you see the use of Drop Everything and Read (DEAR), where space is put aside for reading; and you see a lot of effort going into recommending the “right” texts.

It’s a model based on an assumption that, given the right book and enough time, love of reading is an inevitable consequence.

Most seem to believe that primaries are able to more easily facilitate such interventions, but Martin Galway, head of professional learning and partnerships at the National Literacy Trust, says that is increasingly not the case.

“It’s true that there’s more scope for primary to be able to weave [reading for pleasure and the teaching of reading] together,” he admits. “But it’s something some primary schools are starting to find more challenging because of the combination of the [level of content in the] primary curriculum and pastoral demands.”

Dr Brittany Wright, CPD lead at LEAD Academy Trust, adds that the reading-for-pleasure experience at secondary tends to be incredibly variable between schools, but mostly it is an afterthought because the students who can’t read are the priority, rather than those who can but won’t.

“Schools tend to be at very different points on that journey and therefore have very different priorities,” she reveals. “But the focus has to be - and is usually - on those who are most in need; those who cannot access the curriculum. Reading for pleasure is being bolted on to that.”

The consensus among literacy experts is that very little of what is currently happening with reading for pleasure is effective.

“None of it works well for the kids who need it most,” says Alex Quigley, head of content and engagement at the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and an education consultant specialising in literacy. “If you are spending 20 minutes doing these things every day, that is a dead 20 minutes for those kids.”

Timothy Shanahan, distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Chicago - where he was founding director of the UIC Center for Literacy - agrees: “We had this notion that we needed to give kids free time in school to read for pleasure because we thought they’d never read for pleasure outside school. The research on that has not been very positive.”

‘Reading for pleasure can have a positive impact, but it tends to be tiny’

But what if we did it better? If reading for pleasure did increase, would the attainment benefits follow, as many claim?

Here, definitions matter. Ashley explains that there is good correlational evidence that reading more is associated with cognitive progress, relational benefits and social wellbeing. But her interpretation of reading for pleasure is habitual, volitional reading, not necessarily a passionate love of books.

Shanahan argues that, even with this definition, actually teaching reading in schools is likely to have bigger effects on attainment, specifically in reading.

“Reading for pleasure can have a positive impact, but it tends to be tiny,” he argues. “If you look at studies of instruction, whether it’s the phonic studies or different reading strategy studies or whatever, the effect sizes are four to eight times bigger than the effect sizes for having kids just sort of read part of their day.”

And Quigley says that, for low-attaining pupils, reading for pleasure - however you define it - is probably not the intervention they most need.

“Can we get kids who struggle with reading to read for pleasure, and does that lead to improved reading outcomes? There’s no good evidence for it,” he says.

Professor Jessie Ricketts, director of the Language and Reading Acquisition (LARA) research lab at Royal Holloway, University of London, cautions that, even when trying to boost reading skills by simply doing more reading - whether the pupil “loves” it or not - we need to be careful about what we are trying to achieve.

“For example, there isn’t evidence necessarily that it makes you a better reader just because you read a certain set of texts,” she explains. “It depends on how you define ‘better reader’.

“If being a better reader is being more accurate and fluent, then those aspects tend to be just about how much practice you do at the level of reading you are aiming for. If being a better reader is more about cultural capital, or being able to tackle complex texts, then, yes, exposure to the canon may help.

“But I also warn about generalisation: you cannot expect that, to improve ‘X’, you can do ‘Y’. A really good example of this is vocabulary knowledge - if you want to influence vocabulary knowledge in one area, then teach them those words. Don’t solely rely on reading to expose them to those words and then for them to be able to transfer that knowledge across to other contexts.”

So where does that leave reading for pleasure in schools?

Some argue that teachers should focus on reading skills, and if kids pick up books in their spare time, that is an added benefit.

“It’s the end of a positive story if you do all the other things that you should be focusing on,” says Quigley. “Particularly for the secondary-school context, should you be trying to navigate getting them to read for pleasure or, given they’re going to be doing two-and-a-half hours’ worth of reading most days, should your focus be on getting them to do that really well so they can access what they are reading and understand it?”

Shanahan agrees. “I’d rather have the teachers spending time working with kids with texts rather than having kids just go off and read for pleasure. Yes, influence them and encourage them to read for pleasure, but school probably isn’t the place to actually do it.”

Others take a different tack. Teresa Cremin, professor of education and co-director of the Literacy and Social Justice Centre at The Open University, is one of the world’s leading researchers into what she terms “volitional reading”. For her, focusing solely on skills in schools isn’t an equitable decision.

“For the children who cannot read, we have good practice in place,” she argues. “But I think we are less prepared and less strategically intentional about the millions of children who can read but do not choose to do so.”

For her - and many others - what needs to happen is not an abandonment of schools helping kids to choose to read habitually, but an abandonment instead of the “reading for pleasure” narrative as the vehicle for doing that.

“I don’t fully agree with the term; it’s easy to misinterpret and assumes there has to be happiness involved,” she explains.

Her preferred term, “volitional reading”, is defined as young people choosing to read habitually, motivated by their own interests. And that’s what she thinks schools should focus on.

‘I’d rather have the teachers spending time working with kids with texts rather than having kids just go off and read for pleasure’

Many in the schools and research sector agree that switching the terminology - and thus the reliance on simply offering unstructured reading time - is the best route forwards.

Dr Elaine Allen, strategic lead (secondary) at the St John Vianney English Hub in Blackpool, says that in her experience - and this is shown in student-voice research she has conducted - pupils say they do not necessarily like reading but value it for the knowledge gained. If they can see that gain, they choose to read.

“So we have to ask if we are using the right terminology [by using ‘reading for pleasure’]” she says.

Bellamy, at Fylde Coast, believes “value” is a better word to use, while Ricketts prefers “engagement”. Interestingly, the National Literacy Trust, which may have driven much of the current concern about the decline in reading enjoyment with its annual report measuring this, also has reservations about the “reading for pleasure” phrase.

Questioning the term “reading for pleasure” is “a helpful provocation”, says Galway. However, he sees a “challenge” here: some people are “ready to make that move” to different terminology but, for others, “if you start ripping [the phrase] ‘reading for pleasure’ away, they’ve lost their compass”, he argues.

“So it’s really tricky. You can’t go too fast. But I think if nothing else, we want to open it up to a debate and consider what really sits behind [the phrase] and make that more apparent.”

But if we were to get rid of “reading for pleasure” and opt for, say, “volitional reading” instead, what would actually change in schools?

There’s a lot of work going into this already, both in the research world and in schools, particularly through the English Hubs.

Cremin says we first need a clear political and pedagogical strategy for the dual role schools need to take with reading.

“We have to view the teaching of reading skill and volitional reading as two separate things, with two different pedagogies,” she explains. “One is developing your skill set as a reader; the other is about developing your autonomy, desires and interests.”

Ashley says these two pedagogies need equal weight and funding. “The resource - particularly curriculum time - is currently going towards instruction, so balancing that is a priority.”

Most concede that accountability would need to change, and current levels of content in the programmes of study across all subjects would need to be diminished, as part of this process.

If that happened, what would a volitional reading strategy look like?

Cremin says that it all starts with relationships.

“For example, you can’t say, ‘All the boys in this class, I’ll do this for them,’ because those boys are all different,” she says. “They come from different paths, a different lived experience of being readers and different present experiences of the way they’re positioned in school as readers - with their peers and their teachers. So we have to get to know them individually.”

This “we”, everyone agrees, should not just be the English department or literacy lead, but every teacher in a school.

And one of the main jobs those teachers should be doing, say Cremin and Ashley, is modelling being a reader.

“If my teacher is interested in me and the relationship is strong because of who I am, then if she chats to me about, for example, reading [restaurant critic] Grace Dent at the weekend, then, if I’m also interested in food, I might go and read the same thing. Or maybe I will read other bits in the newspaper, or other cookery stuff, because doing that feels normal and connects us,” says Cremin. “And I might also share my interest in manga with that teacher, because I feel comfortable doing so.

“This is so different to being taken to the library, being asked to find a book I like and being told to get on with it,” she adds. “It’s more informal, and supportive - more conversational and ‘reader-to-reader’.”

She stresses that this can’t be left to chance, but needs to be strategically planned. It’s about creating a reading community, she says. This means that schools also need a plan to entice teachers themselves to feel confident and self-motivated as readers, and to understand different texts - particularly young adult fiction - as well as sharing what they are reading.

While that may sound intimidating in terms of workload, it doesn’t have to be, and you will see results, argues Cremin.

“We’ve seen exactly that happening from our KS3 Reading Schools Programme, where it’s strategically planned and teachers authentically engage as readers, and become reading role models,” she says. “It’s got to involve far more than putting a poster on the door saying, ‘I’m reading X,’ then not finishing it, meaning that the poster is still there three months later.”

Allen concurs that, from her school-based viewpoint, this “book talk” is essential. She says it needs structured time in the curriculum or it won’t happen.

Wright agrees, too, explaining that book clubs have been successful in some of the schools she works with, but adds that, in primary, the PALS (Peer Assisted Learning Strategies) approach has also been transformative.

At secondary specifically, subject-specific reading engagement is critical, argues Nisha Tank, programme manager for school improvement at the National Literacy Trust.

She stresses the importance of subject-led contextual reading at secondary: teachers providing additional reading opportunities relevant to their own content and the outcomes they’re hoping to achieve with the young people.

Within the National Literacy Trust and in the work of the English Hubs and research from the likes of Cremin and Ashley, there is plenty more advice and lots of resources to help bring this all to life.
But with no sign that the government will shift accountability or curriculum to accommodate this, will any of it actually be possible for schools?

Cremin is sympathetic to the demands on schools, but is resolute that this has to happen, whatever the political context.

“Workload and a full curriculum are important issues, but being a teacher and a reader and facilitating a school-wide culture of reading in school is the professional, moral and social responsibility of all staff,” she says.

But even if schools can be convinced that there is time to do it, will they be prepared to abandon a strategy for reading for pleasure - simply offering space and inspiration - that has been ingrained in schools for more than a decade?

Tellingly, there was a reticence from many in the sector and the research world to publicly come out against reading for pleasure: not trying to make kids love books seems counterintuitive, despite the evidence that we are not managing to do that, even with huge resource being put into it.

And people like the idea; they are attached to it, says Quigley, so it is almost breaking a taboo to speak against it.

“I don’t publicly slam reading for pleasure - it would be mad to do so,” he says. “But I don’t advocate for it in schools, either, because it feels like it’s the wrong starting point.”

However, as reading-for-pleasure statistics continue to paint a bleak picture in terms of success, and evidence for different approaches like volitional reading grows, that debate will be increasingly forced into the open.

And then, Wright says with a smile, we need to prepare ourselves.

“Welcome to the Reading Wars: Stage Two,” she says.

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