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. The habit of reading regularly and of choice is associated with multiple educational, social and personal benefits, including for example, reading proficiency, academic achievement, enriched vocabulary, and enhanced psychological wellbeing (OECD 2019; Sullivan & Brown, 2015; Sun et al., 2023; Toste et al., 2020)1. Research indicates that many factors influence the reciprocal relationship between volitional reading and reading attainment, including for example the age of the reader, and the nature of the texts being read. Age is seen to be highly significant, with Van Bergen, Vasalampi and Torppa (2021)2 concluding that it is only from around nine years old, that the amount of time that children spend independently reading predicts growth in reading skills. Not dissimilarly, Allington and McGrill-Franzen (2021)3 argue that the relationship between reading volume and reading achievement only appears once young people have acquired adequate proficiency in independent reading. There is general agreement that the late primary, early secondary years are crucial, although Torppa et al., (2020)4 argue that the reciprocity between leisure reading and reading comprehension is most evident in 12–15-year-olds.
With regard to reading materials, the positive impact of fiction as a motivating force linked to enhanced reading comprehension has been documented fairly widely. For example, in large scale regression analyses of PISA data (e.g. Jerrim and Moss, 2019)5, in longitudinal study of students aged 7-16 years (Torppa et al., 2019)6 and in school-based intervention studies in England with adolescents (Westbrook et al., 2019)7.
This QM Framework is designed to enable secondary schools to consider their reading for pleasure (RfP) provision and the impact of this on young people’s recreational reading at home and in school. Underpinned by international research evidence, the Secondary RfP QM 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. Cremin et al., 2014, 2024; Neugebauer and Gilmour, 2020; Sellers, 2019;Troyer et al., 2019)8.
This recognises that to nurture the habit of reading for young people, 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, 2018)9 and a matter of social justice, determinedly prioritise this, balancing RfP provision with instruction and creating rich reading cultures that support and sustain inclusive communities of engaged readers, over time. Evidence suggests that teachers’knowledge of young adult 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, 201910). These underpinning principles 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, recognized in the DfE Reading Framework (2023),11 combine to motivate young people to choose to read and become frequent readers. They comprise:
- Social reading environments in and around school. Theseare 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.
- High quality reading aloud for pleasure. This is in addition to reading aloud as part of English teaching, it seeks to inspire and engage pupils and feed forward into recreational reading. Reading aloud challenging texts can foster young people’s intrinsic motivation to read.
- Informal text talk. Talk about texts is crucial, 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.
- 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.
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 (DfE, 2023). 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, senior leaders, the English department, librarians and staff from other departments will need to gather evidence of impact on staff knowledge and pedagogy, pupils’ 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 and staff perspectives), pupil and community voice, library borrowing 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.
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- The Silver Award recognises schools which have developedstrategic leadership of RfP for at least two years with recognisable impact on staff knowledge and RfP pedagogy to influence young people’s recreational reading.
- The Gold Award recognises schools which have developed and embedded strategic leadership of RfP for at least two years 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 for more than two years 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.
1 OECD (2019), PISA 2018 Results (Volume II): Where All Students Can Succeed, PISA, OECD Publishing, Paris; Sullivan, A. & Brown, M. (2015) Reading for pleasure and progress in vocabulary and mathematics. British Educational Research Journal, 41(6), 971-991; Sun, Y-J., Sahakian, B. J., Langley, C., Yang, A., Jiang, Y., Jujiao K., Zhao, X., Li, C., Cheng, W. and Fen, J. 2023. ‘Early initiated childhood reading for pleasure: associations with better cognitive performance, mental well-being and brain structure in young adolescence’. Psychological Medicine 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0033291723001381; Toste, J.R., Didion, L., Peng, P., Filderman, M.J. and McClelland, A.M., 2020. A meta-analytic review of the relations between motivation and reading achievement for K–12 students. Review of Educational Research, 90(3),.420-456. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654320919352
2 van Bergen, E., Vasalampi, K. and Torppa, M., 2021. How are practice and performance related? Development of reading from age 5 to 15. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(3),415-434. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.309
3 Allington, R.L. and McGill-Franzen, A.M., 2021. Reading volume and reading achievement: A review of recent research. Reading Research Quarterly, 56, S231-S238. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.404
4 Torppa, M., Niemi, P., Vasalampi, K., Lerkkanen, M.K., Tolvanen, A. and Poikkeus, A.M., 2020. Leisure reading (but not any kind) and reading comprehension support each other—A longitudinal study across grades 1 and 9. Child development, 91(3), 876-900. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13241
5 Jerrim, J. and Moss, G., 2019. The link between fiction and teenagers’ reading skills: International evidence from the OECD PISA study. British Educational Research Journal, 45(1),181-200. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3498
6 Torppa, M., Niemi, P., Vasalampi, K., Lerkkanen, M.K., Tolvanen, A. and Poikkeus, A.M., 2020. Leisure reading (but not any kind) and reading comprehension support each other—A longitudinal study across grades 1 and 9. Child development, 91(3),876-900. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13241
7 Westbrook, J., Sutherland, J., Oakhill, J. and Sullivan, S., 2019. ‘Just reading’: the impact of a faster pace of reading narratives on the comprehension of poorer adolescent readers in English classrooms. Literacy, 53(2),60-68. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12141
8 Cremin, T. Mottram, M. Powell, S, Collins R & Safford, K. (2014) Building Communities of Engaged Readers: Reading for Pleasure, London and NY: Routledge; Cremin, T., Hendry, H., Chamberlain, L. and Hulston, S. (2024) Reading and writing for pleasure: Executive summary of the researchliterature funded by the Mercers’ Company; 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; Sellers, C. (2019) ‘“Fitting in” and “standing out”: the peer group and young people’s development of reader identity’, British Journal of Sociology of Education. 40(7), 938–952; 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, 1197–1218.
9 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
10 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/
11 DfE(2023) The Reading Framework, London, DfE. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/664f600c05e5fe28788fc437/The_reading_framework_.pdf