Parents already fighting cost of living and work stress can add another uphill battle to the list, as Australian children in their prime learning years switch off from reading.
An exclusive survey by consumer data company Fonto reveals that 98 per cent of parents believe reading is very or quite important to their child’s writing and spelling skills, but nearly half of school aged children are reported as only enjoying reading books a little (46 per cent), and one in five teens aged 14-18 are reportedly not enjoying reading at all.
Australian Catholic University educational psychology Professor John Munro called the switch off “a real issue” and said the phenomenon was more pronounced in boys.
“Research in this area shows at about grade 5 or 6 … a lot of boys are turning away from engaging in reading,” he said. “When you look at the NAPLAN data, girls, particularly beyond grade 3, outperform boys in reading comprehension.
“The more you read, the better you read. When you need to read to learn – in years 7, 8, 9, 10 – the students who read better are going to build knowledge better.
“There are real implications beyond just ‘enjoying reading’.”
Professor Munro said as children move from “guardian/child to the secondary phase of peer groups”, boys in particular needed to see fathers and other male role models reading. He recommended parents use “scaffolding” to help children think about what they’re reading before they begin.
“What might happen … what might that person do, what might the problem be. Get the student to put a bit of themselves into the text – that’s what they’re doing when they’re playing video games.”
MultiLit Research director of strategy Dr Jennifer Buckingham said the switch off was worse now than previously “because there’s more competition for the way children … spend their leisure time”.
“It’s partly because of that interest and appeal of being on phones and playing games, but there’s also an amplifying effect,” Dr Buckingham said.
“When kids aren’t paying sustained attention to something like reading a book, their reading stamina decreases, so they’re much more easily distracted.”
Both Professor Munro and Dr Buckingham strongly recommended not giving up on shared reading, including through the teen years.
“Don’t think, ‘Oh well, they can read – job done’,” Dr Buckingham said.
“Read to them for the first five or 10 minutes, then say, ‘Okay, I’d really like to see you at least finish this chapter’. Then the next night … ask them to tell you what happened.”
The Fonto survey results come as Kids News opens registrations for the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee, a free online competition that aims to boost spelling skills in students in years 3-8. Both experts said spelling was “really important”.
“Spelling should be targeted,” Prof Munro said. “Spelling teaches letter patterns that link meaning, spelling grows vocabulary and is really linked with the accuracy with which people say words.”
Dr Buckingham said that if a student knows how a word is spelt, they’re more likely to remember and use it.
“That’s particularly important for writing,” she said. “Writing is very much impeded when students don’t know how to spell very well.”
Do your kids have what it takes to “bee” the best? Test their skills with our spelling bee poster
The Fonto survey of more than 1500 parents also suggests that healthy sales in the children’s book category through Covid don’t tell the full tale, with 41 per cent of kids aged 14-18 rarely or never reading books chosen for them, and 36 per cent rarely or never even reading books they have chosen for themselves.
Indeed, 56 per cent of surveyed parents said Covid had taken a toll on their child’s literacy and learning.
Working mum Renee Nowytarger said her son Zac, 11, “used to really enjoy reading” but “switched off last year”.
“At the moment Zac doesn’t read at all – it’s a constant struggle trying to get him to read,” she said. “I bought him a Kindle, but that didn’t work either … he’s never used it.”
With Zac heading to high school next year, Ms Nowytarger’s “biggest fear is that he’s going to get lost in the system”.
“He’s going to a bigger school where you don’t have the same teacher day in, day out, so they’re going to lose track of where he’s actually at,” she said, adding that the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee was “a great idea”.
“It gives them encouragement, it gives them an interest in it,” she said.
Registrations for the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee are now open HERE.
ABOUT THE BEE
The Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee is a free, online competition for students in Years 3-8.
Students compete at their school in three competition levels: green level for Years 3-4, orange level for Years 5-6 and red level for Years 7-8.
They get 30 randomly selected words from their competition level and have 25 seconds to type each answer. The students with the most correct words in the fastest time progress to finals.
Teachers can register their students from July 25, with the school rounds starting on August 15. The State/Territory Finals will be held on September 1-2 and the National Final will be September 8.
Prizes for the national champion in each age group include a trip to Canberra to meet the Prime Minister and an iPad, plus a $1000 voucher for their school.
Visit kidsnews.com.au for more information
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