To be shocked that the national average reading age is 9-11

Reading isn't just reading words and understanding them. Reading is a complex skill and true understanding is all about the comprehension of a text.

I have worked with many functionally illiterate adults. Yes they can read things in their day to day environment, yes they can get by, they can send and read texts messages, use social media, understand simple letters. They cannot however comprehend anything with deeper complexity. They can read the words but that doesn't mean they truly understand. Wittgenstein said "if a lion could speak English we would not understand him."

Some people achieve a primary school level of education in English and then cannot function higher than this. I have had the pain of trying to teach a class of young adults reading Of Mice and Men. Of course they could read the words, but could they understand the text on a deeper level? Absolutely not. They had to be spoon fed absolutely everything, and for most of it I may as well have been trying to communicate with a lion. The world of a functionally illiterate adult is different to that of a genuinely literate adult. I think until you really work with people like that it can be hard to understand.

I remember showing my father some of the essays I had written that received good marks at university. He's an intelligent but not university educated man. He could read and understand, he was interested, anything he didn't immediately follow he asked me about. Compare with his father... an uneducated man who left school at 14. He can read, but he would never be able to understand the essays. If you asked him to read them aloud, he could of course do that. But it might as well have been written in French. He wouldn't have even known where to begin to ask questions about it.

I expect he panicked. I know I would in that bloody chair, I’d probably have difficulty remembering my name.

It's not just literacy though is it?

Just the other week a contestant on Mastermind (Mastermind!) was asked what the cube root of 8 was. He threw his hands in the air and looked like he had been slapped in the face with a wet fish.

I mean, it's not exactly A level maths is it? As far as I can remember we did this very early at secondary school and these days I think it might even be introduced in Y6. How can someone go through at least 11 years of school, possibly 13, maybe even University, and be so floored by such basic knowledge.

I would have thought the average ten year old could read quite well tbh. I'm not sure what this stat tells us. DC is in year 2 and the majority of them can read pretty well.

I assume it's more to do with comprehension than whether they can actually read words or not. Comprehension levels are very low, you see that here (and all over the internet) all the time.

I wonder what it is globally? I'd bet not much higher in the West.

For the people wondering what a typical 7 or 9 or 11 year old can read, there’s a summary on p8 of this NHS document, which RampantIvy and I mentioned above.
It also gives examples of what it means in a healthcare setting, eg understand the words on a simple poster ‘Smoking is bad for you’. (typical 9 year old)

It would be much easier if I could post a screenshot of the page, but that’s not allowed at the moment.

Mine's definitely worse than it was at 10, due to brain fog!

My DC11 apparently has a reading age of 17, according to the CAT test, but the awful Sparx Reader system now, in year 7, has put him off reading altogether. He loved reading before, but now can't face it. :(

I'm not shocked tbh. MNs is meant to attract fairly educated posters & yet sometimes the lack of comprehension is breathtaking.

We never had reading records at primary school, not by the juniors anyway, but had teachers who talked enthusiastically about books they loved, and shared them with us. I remember it was almost unbearable waiting to hear the next instalment of The Witches. That's what encouraged my love of reading, books and words - being read to, not filling in reading records and joylessly ploughing through 150 levels of a reading scheme.

It's not a joke that The Sun needs a reading age of 8. That's a fact.
The joke was aimed more at the intellectual ability of it's readers. Which actually isn't pleasant I suppose.

It’s been the same for as long as I can remember. Which is a very long time.

I write for my job, and we are supposed to try to write for a 9th grade reading level. Which would be age 14-15.

Not at all surprising. I don't think that my reading ability or comprehension is all that different to how it was when I was 10. I’m an avid reader and always have been, since childhood.

I’m in Scotland and I can absolutely believe the average reading age is 9 or 10 years old.

My son’s nursery (and his health visitor) are often giving away bags with books in them for parents to read to the little ones, presumably to stop the rot of such an appalling literacy standard.

We (somewhat annoyingly) do 4 books a night, but I never let it slip as I know how poor reading is in this country.

What I don't really understand is what a "reading age of 9-11" really means. If I heard that phrase, I would typically assume that it referred to the reading ability of the average 9-11 year old, but I'm not sure how that works if it is also the reading ability of the average adult... surely that would make it an adult reading age?!

Yes this is what I wondered.who sets these reading ages? Are these meant to be what we would like 9 to 11 year olds to achieve or what most 9 to 11 year olds can achieve?

FWIW when I was 11 I could read and understand pretty damn well, certainly don't think I would have been classed as functionally illiterate

Where is the source for this, how is the 'average' calculated? Which ages does it include?

Here's some of the findings of the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills (OECD)

Countries outperforming England in literacy:
Finland (296), Japan (289), Sweden (284), Norway (281), Netherlands (279), Estonia (276), Flemish Region (Belgium) (275)

Countries not significantly different from England in literacy:
Denmark (273), Canada (271)

Countries significantly lower than England in literacy:
Switzerland (266), Germany (266), Ireland (263), Czechia (260), OECD average (260), New Zealand (260), United States (258), France (255), Singapore (255), Austria (254), Croatia (254), Slovak Republic (254), Korea (249), Hungary (248), Latvia (248), Spain (247), Italy (245), Israel (244), Lithuania (238), Poland c (236), Portugal (235), Chile (218)

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/survey-of-adult-skills-2023-national-report-for-england

It's not necessarily lack of parental effort. I am hyperlexic - I taught myself to read at three and DD1 was an advanced reader. DD2 never took to it and struggled. She isn't dyslexic but has ADHD and ASD, and it's a processing thing. With both of them I read to/with them from when they were babies and we took them to the Hay Festival, met their favourite authors, talked about books all the time.

Having to dutifully fill in a reading record for years at school killed off any reading for pleasure as it made it a chore. Neither of them read much for pleasure now and DD2 still struggles with what she needs to read for school.

It's a stat I remember my English teacher using in the mid-90s when we were analysing different ways newspapers reported stories.

My children both have dyslexia. DS1 is also affected by autism affecting the way he interprets and analyses text (although has a reading age above his actual age). DS2 has more difficulty reading and processing text. There's a limit in his working memory of how much he can consider at a time. Some skills such as vocabulary are strong, but some skills such as breaking down a word into its phonics and blending it are weak. Reading is not a relaxing pleasure for him to enjoy, but I've tried to get around it with audio books and reading to him to gain as many benefits of reading as possible.

There's a limit to how high a reading age will be but many reasons why a reading age can be lower.

I don’t get this though. When I was 11 I could read very well. I’m not sure I have improved since then and get on just fine. I think a reading age of 11 is, well, being able to read?

Why?
I'm shocked as well.
I didn't learn at school what the reading age of various newspapers was. If you don't know you don't know.

It's going to get some much worse. This next generation read far less than even the 20 year olds.

I'm shocked that you are shocked. I remember learning at school.what the reading age of various newspapers was.

Not sure it was a joke

Yes, again, I understand that. I just don't understand who determines the requirements for each reading age or how those are determined if it isn't based on national averages.

Well, Harry Potter coups he a guideline to what that looks like. The level of comprehension there is fine for even an adult, and I feel like if they went to university then they would be able to develop their skills further