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Primary Quality Mark Framework

Young people who read for pleasure make time in their lives for reading- they choose to read regularly and for their own purposes. These motivated readers and meaning makers demonstrate positive reader identities and attitudes and often enjoy sharing and discussing texts with others. They have developed the habit of reading in childhood which is associated with several educational, social and personal benefits, including for example, reading proficiency, academic achievement, enriched vocabulary, and emotional wellbeing (Clark & Teravainen-Goff, 2018; Lindorff, Stiff & Kayton, 2023; Sullivan & Brown, 2015; OECD 2019i).

This QM Framework is designed to enable schools to consider their reading for pleasure (RfP) provision and the impact of this on young people’s recreational reading at home and at school. Underpinned by international research evidence, the Framework focuses upon the knowledge, understanding and practices that motivate young people to want to read, to read frequently and to become engaged and socially interactive readers (e.g. Batini et al., 2018; Cremin et al., 2014; Ho & Lau, 2018; McGeown & Wilkinson, 2021; Moses & Kelly, 2018, 2019; Neugeberger and Gilmour, 2020; Troyer et al., 2019ii). It recognises that to nurture the habit of reading in childhood, schools need to continuously review and enrich their RfP provision, monitoring its impact on the young people and adjusting their offer accordingly. The most successful schools, recognising that RfP is every child’s right (ILA, 2018iii) and a matter of social justice, determinedly prioritise this, balancing their RfP provision with reading instruction and creating rich reading cultures that support and sustain inclusive communities of engaged readers over time. Evidence suggests that teachers’ knowledge of children’s literature and other texts and of their young people as readers enables the development of a responsive RfP pedagogy, which is Learner-led, Informal, Social and with relevant Texts that tempt (Cremin, 2019iv). These are the underpinning principles of RfP pedagogy- and offer a RfP pedagogy check-LIST that can be used by staff to ensure their work is oriented towards nurturing a love of reading. The four interrelated strands of this pedagogy combine to motivate young people to choose to read and become frequent readers. They comprise:

  1. High quality reading aloud for pleasure. This is in addition to reading aloud as part of literacy teaching, it seeks to inspire and engage children and feed forward into recreational reading. Reading aloud challenging texts can foster young people’s intrinsic motivation to read.
  2. Informal text talk. Talk about texts is crucial to all literacy teaching, but this reader-to-reader talk is more informal, often spontaneous, and includes reciprocal book recommendations between young people themselves and between young people and their teachers. Such talk can socially motivate young readers.
  3. Choice-led independent reading time. Young people need time to read and build their stamina, and support for making discerning choices from a range of diverse and relevant texts that tempt and are aligned to their reading goals and interests.
  4. Social reading environments in and around school. These are key to creating a strong reading culture. Successful environments invite readers to engage and share the pleasures of reading as part of the wider community of readers.

These four strands of RfP pedagogy are neither routines nor isolated practices, rather they are interconnected and interdependent; they enrich each other and offer young people social, affective and relational opportunities to engage as readers. Developing sustaining and embedding an authentic culture of reading in school is the collective responsibility of all staff. Schools that effectively nurture the habit of reading, regularly review, develop and monitor their reading for pleasure provision. They put systems in place to evaluate the quality of their offer and document the impact of their provision on young people’s leisure reading.

In using the RfP QM Framework to review their provision, head teachers, English leaders, librarians and RfP change teams will need to gather evidence of impact on staff knowledge and pedagogy, children’s reading identities, attitudes and behaviours and perhaps parents’ perspectives and understandings. This is likely to be drawn from a range of sources, including for example: policy and planning documents, timetables, observations, learning walks, reading for pleasure transition information, focus groups and surveys (of young people, staff and parents’ perspectives), pupil and parent voice, library borrowing records, home-school reading records and more. Using a mixture of tools will enable a rounded picture of the impact on staff knowledge and pedagogy and on young readers to be developed, supporting the school’s plan to submit for a silver, gold or platinum RfP award. The three levels enable schools and settings to show their long-term commitment to RfP and to apply at the level commensurate with the development work they have undertaken thus far. Each Award lasts for two years.

  • The Silver Award recognises schools and settings which have developed RfP with recognisable impact on staff knowledge and RfP pedagogy and young people’s recreational reading.
  • The Gold Award recognises schools and settings which have developed and embedded an RfP culture with recognisable impact on staff knowledge and RfP pedagogy, and on parents’ and young people’s recreational reading.
  • The Platinum Award recognises schools and settings which have developed, embedded and enriched their RfP culture and ethos with recognisable impact on staff knowledge, RfP pedagogy, and on parents’ and young people’s recreational reading. In addition, Platinum Award schools and settings offer invitational targeted RfP provision for those young people who are less engaged, and as institutions they are outward facing, involving the wider community. They also have a track record of sustaining RfP which impacts on all young people as readers.

Copyright Notice: By enrolling on, and taking part in, the Reading for Pleasure Quality Mark (and in consideration of your fees) you shall not share, copy nor publish in any way the audit Framework for the Reading for Pleasure QM, your responses to that audit Framework, nor your Impact Statement or other related materials or responses. Any breach of this Copyright Notice will result in your immediate removal from the Reading for Pleasure QM and revocation of your awards, without reimbursement of your fees.

ii Batini, F., Bartolucci,M., and Timpone, A.(2018) The effects of reading aloud in the primary school Psychology of education: an interdisciplinary journal 55 (1 and 2):111-122; Cremin, T. Mottram, M. Powell, S, Collins R & Safford, K. (2014) Building Communities of Engaged Readers: Reading for Pleasure. London and NY: Routledge; Ho, E. S. C. and Lau, K. (2018) Reading engagement and reading literacy performance, Journal of Research in Reading, 41 (4), pp. 657–679; McGeown, S. and Wilkinson, K. (2021) Inspiring and sustaining reading for pleasure in children and young people, Leicester, UKLA; Moses, L. & Kelly, L. (2018) ‘We’re a little loud. That’s because we like to read!’; Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 18.3 pp. 307-337; Moses, L & Kelly, L. B. (2019) Are They Really Reading? A Descriptive Study of First Graders During Independent Reading, Reading & Writing Quarterly, 35:4 ,pp. 322-338; Neugebauer,S. R. and Gilmour,A. F. (2020). The Ups and Downs of Reading Across Content Areas: The Association Between Instruction and Fluctuations in Reading Motivation Journal of Educational Psychology 112 (2): 344 –363; Troyer, M., Kim, J., Hale, E., Wantchekon, K. and Armstrong. A. (2019) Relations among intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation, reading amount, and comprehension, Reading and Writing (2019) 32: pp. 1197–1218.

iii International Literacy Association (2018) The Case for Children’s Rights to Read. Available at: https://literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/resource-documents/the-case-for-childrens-rights-to-read.pdf

iv Cremin, T. (2019) Reading communities and books in common, National Association of Advisers of English, NAAE, article http://www.naae.org.uk/reading-communities-and-books-in-common/

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