Secondary children drawn to easier books, report finds
SECONDARY school children choose to read easier books as they get older and their comprehension of the texts declines to below the level of upper primary pupils, a major study has found.
The 2022 “What and How Kids Are Reading” report, from reading programme developers Renaissance Learning, showed that children in primary schools showed a much higher quality of comprehension than secondary pupils when reading books of the same level of difficulty.
Prof Keith Topping, professor of educational and social research at the University of Dundee, who conducted the research, said: “Older children are failing to progress from primary level books.”
The study, which looked at more than one million pupils, found that after year seven the difficulty of favoured books declined sharply, with the move to secondary school having a significant effect on this choice even among highly motivated readers.
Prof Topping added: “In primary schools, average book difficulty rose as pupils got older, but in secondary schools it plateaued and eventually declined. Older pupils in secondary school were still reading the same difficulty of books as upper primary pupils and the overall reading comprehension of primary school children is better than secondary school pupils.
“The amount of time allocated to reading self-chosen books in secondary school is less than in primary school. And we know that reading performance is directly related to the amount of time reading such books.
“However, this does not explain why secondary pupils read books of the same level of difficulty as upper primary pupils but with a lower level of quality of comprehension. This suggests that secondary pupils are just more careless
‘Maybe if they read books that were more challenging for them they would feel an urge to concentrate better’
than primary pupils. Maybe if they read books that were more challenging for them they would feel an urge to concentrate better.”
The study also saw a continued resurgence in popularity for JK Rowling, who jumped back into the top five most popular authors. The Harry Potter author was found to be the fourth most popular author across all ages groups, behind Jeff Kinney, David Walliams and Roald Dahl, having finished 7th and 12th in 2021 and 2020 respectively.