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Addressing the reading crisis: challenges and solutions for cultivating young readers in schools and libraries

Addressing the reading crisis: challenges and solutions

June 16th 2026

Following our 'Children's reading: what crisis?' webinar in partnership with The Reading Agency and The Open University, Head of Library Services Alison Tarrant examines the barriers to reading and explores practical ways in which schools and public libraries can cultivate young readers.

Alison Tarrant

Alison Tarrant| Head of Library Services

Alison joined Peters in 2024 to manage our Librarian and Bibliographic team, having worked in and around school and public libraries for more than 10 years. In her most recent role as CEO of the School Library Association, she worked closely with organisations such as CILIP, BookTrust and The Reading Agency. 

Alison loves reading both children's and adult literature, and appreciates a great information book too!

Last month, I had the privilege of joining The Reading Agency and the Open University for a webinar examining the reading ‘crisis’ – some of the causes, and how the National Year of Reading is seeking to address it. It was a brilliant webinar and you'll find The Reading Agency's blog about it here.

Some of the reasons children are no longer reading as much as they used to are well known, and are being experienced by many parents, teachers, librarians across the United Kingdom. 

Finding the right book can be a challenge, and not every book will feel relevant to every child. Children may have been in situations where their reading choices have been diminished or ridiculed, or what they’ve been able to read has been restricted, all of which can reduce the overall likelihood of them picking up a book. Many children now won’t be visiting bookshops like Waterstones or Foyles or their independent bookshop from a young age and learning how to browse. Many children won’t know how to work out whether a book is the right book for them. Rather than assuming children will have the ability to navigate a large selection of books, browsing is a skill that may need to be taught.

It's always useful to try and put yourself in the shoes of a child who may have never been read to, who doesn’t have an adult role model whom they regularly see enjoying reading, or even an adult in their lives who themselves is a confident reader.

Teachers can be that role model, but children will notice if you’re not following through on what you say. Many teachers will be telling the children that reading is important, but they won’t have any books available for themselves to read in the classroom. They won’t talk about spending an evening reading, or complete a reading diary. This can lead to children thinking teachers are inauthentic, saying one thing but doing another, and undermines the message about reading.

Sometimes the expectations that we place on children are just not realistic; they don't reflect how we read as adults. We're not very good at building in an allowance for times when a child’s life is actually busy, whether that’s because of family life or school life or something else. Reading is only a ‘must do’ activity for a small percentage of people; for most people, it’s something they want to do, and prioritise above certain things, but not everything. We should give children the same grace.

 Children's reading choices

All of these things combined can be demotivating for children; they haven't ticked all of the very specific tick-boxes that we've created for them, and as a result don’t see themselves as a reader. Instead of presenting reading like sweets (as Cressida Cowell suggests) we’ve created barriers and put them in their way.

We need to be very specific about what we mean when we do talk about readers, making sure that a reading culture is more than just talked about, that it is something that is both felt and seen. 

Reading fundamentals

To do this, we really need to underpin those reading fundamentals:

-    choice
-    the fact that reading should be a social activity
-    representation and accessibility
-    reading role models.

Read on for ideas for schools, school library services and public libraries keen to help develop and embed a reading culture.
 

Next steps for schools

  • Reach out to your public libraries and/or your school library services. It's really important that we have a reading culture as a community rather than individual and isolated circles. You’ll find amazing support.
  • Reflect on the reading culture within your school. Are some of the things that I've mentioned ingrained? Do they happen sometimes but not others? Do you unintentionally have things in place that are working against the embedding of a reading culture? There are often counter pressures in schools; it is quite a unique situation. When I was a school librarian I was aware of a friction between wanting everyone to read for pleasure but also wanting everyone to read; I still had a duty to make sure that the kids who really, really, really didn't like reading could read the test paper on their GCSEs and give them the best possible chance of passing their exams.
  • What are the pressures that you're under? And what can you do about them? Is there someone that you can talk to, to vocalise the fact that that there are two agreed objectives or rules which are potentially clashing with one another? 
  • Have a think about how frequently your stock is refreshed. By refreshed you may think I mean how often you are buying new stock – and yes, if you have the budget to do so you should be doing it as frequently as you can! But if your budget isn’t endless, don't underestimate the impact of moving your stock around. When was the last time that you moved the books from one classroom to another? Or moved your library around so that your sections were laid out slightly differently? This can have a huge impact on borrowing and discovery, and sometimes on behaviour.

 

      Next steps for libraries

  • The upcoming Summer Reading Challenge is a fantastic opportunity to reach out to schools in your local area, or school library services. We know getting into schools can be tricky, so perhaps your local SLS could hold the key to reaching them and sharing more information about what you're doing over the summer.
  • How can we make other less ‘visible’ kinds of reading that children are doing more visible, so they feel more accepted? Could you run an audio book or magazine book group instead, or a fan fiction festival meet up?
  •           Choice matters, but even walking into a small library space can be quite intimidating if you're not used to being surrounded by books. So how can you make browsing more accessible? Could you pick your top 10 most underappreciated books, and do a 60 second introduction that is recorded and accessible through a QR code? The children can then watch the video and be introduced to the books in a slightly different way.
  • Do you have borrowers who could act as a reading role model, in the same way that we talk about reading relationships in schools? Some young people assume that if you are in a library, you're automatically a reader and have always used the library. How can we undo that assumption? Could we find ways to showcase those people who found the library later, and show the realistic side of reading? That might help more children to feel more included and encourage them to self-identify as readers.

Let us know what else you are doing in your school or library to overcome this current reading crisis – we’d love to hear from you.

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