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ERIC Number: ED617860
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Dec
Pages: 20
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Forgotten Girls: The Reluctant Girl Readers. A National Literacy Trust Research Report
Picton, Irene; Clark, Christina; Riad, Lara; Cole, Aimee
National Literacy Trust
The conversation around reluctant readers continues to focus on boys, with research, practice and policy exploring what could be done to (re)engage boys in reading (see National Literacy Trust, 2012; Department for Education, 2019; OECD, 2021). Girls who don't enjoy reading or who don't read in their free time are seldom the focus of interest, despite evidence indicating that this group is sizeable. Data from the National Literacy Trust's Annual Literacy Survey in 2021, in which 21,696 girls aged 8 to 18 from across the United Kingdom (UK) participated, indicates that more than 2 in 5 (44.1%) of them don't enjoy reading. This translates to approximately two million girls in 2020/2021. Furthermore, 1 in 10 (10.2%) girls also said that they rarely or never read in their free time. Both of these groups could be described as being 'reluctant' readers and this report shows that they share similar motivational issues, which are amplified in the group of girls who don't read at all. The National Literacy Trust also partnered with Renaissance, an assessment, teaching and learning provider, to explore how girls' reading skill and reading habits interlink. To this end, Renaissance shared data from 286,240 girls, including information about reading engagement taken from their Accelerated Reader platform, and reading skill data from their Star Reading test. As schooling in the UK in 2020 was severely disrupted by the pandemic, data was used from 2018/2019 to provide this additional insight. Overall, this report shows that the discussion around reluctant girl readers is complex. Girls read, or don't read, for a multitude of reasons, and so one solution will not fit all. Future initiatives should aim to promote reading in a way that reflects this complexity, understanding that different motivations will work for different girls. [This report was funded by the Estee Lauder Companies.]
National Literacy Trust. Swire House, 59 Buckingham Gate, London, SW1E 6AJ, UK. Tel: +44-2078-282435; Fax: +44-2079-319986; e-mail: contact@literacytrust.org.uk; Web site: http://www.literacytrust.org.uk
Publication Type: Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: National Literacy Trust (United Kingdom)
Identifiers - Location: United Kingdom (England)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A