6 December 2018

 

• ROGO launches best practice guide to close gender gap in reading enjoyment
• Children’s author Cressida Cowell publishes top reading tips for kids and parents

New research from the Read On. Get On. (ROGO) coalition, which Beanstalk is a member of, reveals that the gender gap in children’s reading enjoyment has narrowed by 5 percentage points since 2014 [1].

 

In this time, the percentage of 11-year-old boys who enjoy reading has increased six times faster than the percentage of girls who enjoy reading (9.5% vs 1.4%). Yet girls still outperform boys in all areas of reading recognised by the coalition to be vital for children to read well at age 11 [2]: enjoyment (79.4% vs 70.4%), daily reading levels (57% vs 44.7%) and skills (89.1% vs 83.2%) [3].

 

The ROGO Index 2018 also looked at how well England’s 11-year-olds are reading in 2018, and found that children’s overall enjoyment of reading (74.7%) and daily reading levels (50.5%) lag worryingly behind their reading skills (85.7%).

 

Ginny Lunn, CEO, Beanstalk: "At Beanstalk our vision is to ensure that all children have the opportunity to become confident and able readers and we know that the first step to achieving this is through encouraging a love of books at an early age. This is central to the work our volunteers do in early years settings and primary schools and it is this one-to-one, child-led approach which we have seen transform reading attitudes, particularly among boys who have been very reluctant in the beginning. We are proud to be part of the ROGO coalition and to share best practice so that we can encourage more children to read for pleasure at home and at school."

 

Analysis from the National Literacy Trust suggests that getting more children to enjoy reading could also be the key to raising daily reading levels and getting more 11-year-olds reading well: 11-year-olds who enjoy reading are three times more likely to read daily outside school than those who don’t (60.9% vs 20.1%) [4].

 

To help close the gender gap in children’s reading enjoyment, and to get more children reading outside school on a daily basis, the ROGO coalition has published a best practice guide for primary schools containing a range of different activities and initiatives. The free resource is available to download from www.readongeton.org.uk.

 

To support the ROGO campaign, award-winning children’s author Cressida Cowell has collaborated with the National Literacy Trust to create:

 

* An eye-catching poster for Key Stage 1 pupils, filled with her top tips for reading and colourful illustrations by Neal Layton from their Emily Brown books

 

* An engaging poster for Key Stage 2 pupils, featuring Cressida’s top tips for discovering the magic of reading and her wonderful illustrations from The Wizards of Once series

 

* A top tips leaflet for parents containing achievable advice on how to encourage and support children’s reading at home

 

Cressida Cowell said: “If we want our country, our children, to thrive in the future, we would do well to heed these statistics and put the joy of reading back into the heart of education and home life. The quest to get every child reading for pleasure is not just an optional extra – it’s an imperative.”

For more information and to download your free best practice guide, posters for children and top tips for parents, visit: www.readongeton.org.uk. 

 

Help close the gender gap and encourage reading enjoyment among all children by becoming a Beanstalk reading helper. 

[1] Read On. Get On. (2018) ROGO Index 2018. Published by the National Literacy Trust on behalf of the Read On. Get On. coalition 

Percentage point gap between boys’ and girls’ reading enjoyment from 2014/15 to 2017/18:  

	% of 11-year-old boys who enjoy reading	% of 11-year-old girls who enjoy reading	Percentage point gap
2014/15	64.30%	78.30%	14
2017/18	70.40%	79.40%	9

[2] Read On. Get On. (2017) What it means to be a reader at age 11 – valuing skills, affective and behavioural processes. Published by the National Literacy Trust on behalf of the Read On. Get On. coalition 

The ROGO tripartite model of reading shows that a child’s ability to read well at age 11 depends on three factors:  

1. Reading skills (i.e. decoding and comprehension) – the ROGO Index measures reading skills with data from the government’s Key Stage 2 national curriculum assessments, GL Assessment’s New Group Reading Test (NGRT) and Renaissance Learning’ Reading Stars test
2. Affective processes (i.e. reading enjoyment) – measured using data from the National Literacy Trust’s Annual Literacy Survey
3. Reading behaviours (i.e. daily reading frequency)– measured using data from the National Literacy Trust’s Annual Literacy Survey

[3] Comparison of girls’ and boys’ reading at age 11 in 2014/15 and 2017/18:  

	2014/15		2017/18
	Boys	Girls	Boys	Girls
Cognitive reading skills*  - Measured using data from by GL Assessment and Renaissance Learning	82.90%	88.40%	83.20%	89.10%
Reading enjoyment  - Measured using data from National Literacy Trust	64.30%	78.30%	70.40%	79.40%
Daily reading frequency  - Measured using data from National Literacy Trust	44.40%	44.70%	58.30%	57.00%