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

[SailorSerena]

I often think why are people finding this confusing? It's not difficult! Did any of these posters even read the OP!? When reading threads here. On another thread I saw someone say so you know what the national average reading age is? When peoples comprehension was criticised. So I googled it. And I'm appalled!

How on earth is the UKs reading ability so poor that the average adult has the reading ability of a 10 year old child!?

Not the point of this thread, I know, but it make me SO PROUD of my nine year old who has Down's Syndrome, that in an assessment she did in the Autumn term she was scored as having a reading age of 6 years 11 months 💕📚

I don't think the internet is a problem as there are many scholarly articles on there that were previously only available if you attended a university. PubMed for example.
I think it's certainly broadened my own knowledge (in my 50s).

@sashh
I couldn't swear it's the same test but the one I use is accelerated reader and has been around for 20 years.
I wouldn't be surprised if you had a high reading age as you read a lot. I often test dyslexic kids who score very highly. Why not if they read a lot? Reading is something that is easier if you do it regularly hence why we say kids needs to read for 20 minutes every day. Dyslexia can make reading harder but it doesn't stop kids who like stories.
I tested a year 7 lad last year who is on the send register for dyslexia and he scored nearly 14 years. That was in September year 7. He could read Christmas Carol, the English set text for GCSE with that level.

I write content for a government department and we write for a maximum reading age of 11 which means for example, short, basic sentences and no adverbs etc. Average reading age is very low. I've previously written content for prisoners where the average reading age is 7.

I've been doing this for more than 20 years and it was a problem way before the Internet.

That’s amazing! My DC has a genetic condition with some similarities to Down’s and is currently nonverbal at nearly 3, but this gives me hope for the future. Well done to her and you ❤️

I'm sure it's been the policy of many Governments for adults to only reach a literacy level high enough to read The Sun newspaper anyway

I've been with my current DH 11 years and in this time his reading has improved - mostly from reading things on his phone but he has also read books which he had never done before. We got rid of the TV so that helped.
There could be more done to encourage reading in adults.
People leave school with poor reading skills and just think that's it.

Do you think it would help if more set reading material was non fiction? Not every child is interested in traditional stories.
One of my son's teachers was brilliant and just said to encourage him to read anything, via any medium, digital or hard copy. Even the cereal packet ingredients which we did do! Road signs were popular too!

@LoztWorld at that age my daughter had maybe 20 words, didn't put more than one word together and relied mainly on Makaton (she had about 100 signs). With time (and speech therapy!) her spoken language grew. Learning to read took time because children with Down's syndrome rely more on whole word reading, which means phonics can confuse matters. In year 1 she had a growing vocabulary of words she could read from her own (old school) reading scheme, but struggled to take what she was learning from the flash cards etc to other books, even though she knew the words, as she was trying to sound everything out, but then couldn't blend. Something then clicked in year 2 and she's not looked back! She enjoys reading picture books like Supertato, but occasionally will read a page or two from an older paperback. She loves listening to me read the Worst Witch books at bedtime.

Good luck with your daughter! She'll be what she'll be 🥰

https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/what-do-adult-literacy-levels-mean/#:~:text=In%20England%2C%20adult%20literacy%20is,to%2011%2Dyear%2Dold.

I'm typing this only just after the first page of comments, so am no doubt only repeating what others have said.

The above is the English data where in 2011 they found that 1 in 7 adults in England had a literacy level at or below the 9-11 year age range.

In 2024, a different survey found that 1 in 6 adults had a literacy level below level 1 (ages 5-7).

Do those surveys look at the entire population, or just those with English as a First Language?

I work with many people that are all "adults in England", but hardly any of them come from the UK, so their literacy isn't always great, but it's a second language to them.

That said, my own DH's literacy skills are terrible. He cannot follow a recipe for cooking, for example, as he just misreads things.

He is, I think, part of a generation that skipped dyslexia assessment and just got dismissed as "stupid".

His own mum worked really hard with him to improve his reading skills from what they were and he had never believed he had any real issues with reading. He used to tell me he didn't like reading books because he was too slow a reader, but never thought that he actually had a genuine problem with reading.

That was, until our niece turned 7 and we took her to the zoo for the day and she read the signs outside the animal enclosures quicker than DH did.

It was at that point that he realised quite how poor his own reading skills were. Up until that point he thought I was just some sort of super reader, as opposed to just being able to read normally!

I still haven't managed to convince him to consider that he might be dyslexic, but I am going to try and show him something in a dyslexia font, to see if that makes a difference to him.

His writing is OK though - it's just his reading.

On the other hand, my Dad's writing is atrocious - poor spelling, no grammar, etc, but he loves reading.

I have long thought that when children start in year seven at secondary school, every child should be heard reading and be asked questions about the text they are reading in order to establish their level of reading comprehension. This could be done in the library sessions that they have in most, if not all, schools in the autumn term. It is quite common for children to slip through the net and it is at this stage, long before GCSEs, that intervention could be put in place if needed. It doesn’t hurt the able reader to be heard reading, either, as they could be given ideas to stretch their reading further. The year six SATs don’t always give an accurate picture of reading ability. I know secondary teachers will be saying that there is far too little time to do this, but reading is fundamental to the whole academic curriculum and if a child is falling behind in reading ability at eleven, their chances of getting reasonable grades in GCSEs later on are very much reduced. As I said before, if each child is taken out of a library lesson to be heard reading in the first half term of secondary school, it could pay dividends further up the school. Reading should be a priority.

@JaninaDuszejko as @KetteringQueen tried to explain, I really don’t think people don’t get better at reading (or comprehension really) but they probably do slow down a lot after some point (late twenties perhaps?)
and because of that and the fact that the state finishes with you aged 18 the scale probably doesn’t go much higher. This creates an asymmetrical distribution that you can’t just average, well you can perform the calculations but the results might just be meaningless

Do you get many volunteers at this stage (years 6 & 7)? People to go in helping with reading etc?

This already happens. The NGRT test is designed to test comprehension and reading age. If there is a low reading age, more tests are carried out to test for dyslexia and processing speed (LUCID test).

I don't think it's shocking but that's perhaps that's because it's always been considered the average reading age even in the 70s and 80s. If writing any text for public it's always been the aim to keep the reading age down to age 9 or 10.

Maybe literacy has got better over the years but it's also probably got better in nine to 11 year olds. Literacy probably improves further while at secondary school but then once people start working it may go down again depending on what job they do.

@Violinist64

In addition to the half term reading age tests, our pupils have a library lesson every fortnight, and read silently at the beginning of lessons. They get a negative point for forgetting their reading book. Our lowest readers get three extra English sessions per fortnight instead of MfL.

You should visit a secondary school, we do wonderful things there

Why are people talking about improving the reading of children in school? Adults need to improve rather than children surely?

I was trying to reply to this:

Many people don't read anything more taxing than a road sign after they leave school. Only a small proportion read for pleasure, and their abilities decline from 16 onwards

So yes I get we are not all the same but I didn’t think that reading for pleasure was that unusual and certainly would contest that abilities decline from 16 onwards. I don’t feel like I’ve lost the ability to read and interpret more complex content as I’ve got older. If anything I feel like I’ve got better at it over time. I think my phone took too long to post and somehow dropped the comment.

I suppose it's because school is the place where targeted input can most easily take place. It's harder to reach adults who have left education as they have to want and ask for help.

@BarkLife, I am glad that your school is proactive in this area. Sadly, many secondary schools do not appear to be. What is involved in the half term reading tests? Are they reading a list of words of increasing difficulty, or are they actually reading a portion of text and being asked questions about it?

@Violinist64

They read excerpts from books with increasing/decreasing difficulty level based on their answers. The questions are around definitions/comprehension/word identification. The tests are much more accurate than we teachers could carry out in person.

I believe these interventions are common in schools nationwide, although our SEND provision is fairly exceptional.

Today’s adults didn’t have the identification, support and interventions that we have in schools now. Interventions and enhanced provision are commonplace nowadays for children who are significantly behind in their reading.

By definition it's adults that aren't reading well in comparison to children though. The gap will only be closed if adults are helped rather than children.

It’s much higher than the the USA.