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!?

Would you really write something like "long turm" or "neara" through? Those aren't just typos.

No. There was the lower stream where they watched videos all the time (yes really!) the middle stream which I was in and the upper stream (I think that is what they called it). Our education was a joke and the middle stream often had no teachers - there seemed to be a shortage.

One day a guy came in to teach us maths and for the first time I understood long and short division (I know I am slightly off topic but this shows the shoddy education we got - no wonder I often truanted!!). Sadly he never came back!!!

Children and young people don't read books any more. They are on their phones which use a different literacy and language.

It's very easy to mask being illiterate, and all the best apps and web design allow you to get by with very little.

Lots of people prefer to use the phone not because they like to speak to a person, but because they can't navigate a paper or web form (yes, I know some people just prefer it).

I work in education tech, and I had to fight endlessly with an ex-web designer over their excessive use of text on screen. Note ex - we had to ditch them because their designs weren't simple.enough for massive use.

It's not just the obvious suspects too. I have a friend with a first class degree in music (she can read music just fine). She reads slowly and without fluency out loud, and whenever the group chat is going, she's always misunderstanding what people say because her reading comprehension is very poor.

And frankly, when someone reads something poorly written on Mumsnet and does the whole, "I don't get it" routine as a snark at the OP, I think, "this was perfectly obvious by inference". Either they are being a bitch, or their own lack of reading comprehension is showing.

I'm not surprised.
Have you ever been on a local Facebook Spotted page or some parents whatsapp groups? Really scary stuff.

Mostly I just accidentally swap letter placements. So I could type diangosis instead of diagnosis. In some of your examples, I would absolutely assume a typo. Maybe not in every single one of them.

Which means that 32% didn’t; that’s shameful for a supposedly internationally significant economy.
Parents must take responsibility for this: no child should go to school not knowing which way up to hold a book, parents should be actively be supporting their child’s education and parents must make sure that their children know how to behave in a group setting so that all children can access learning opportunities. Not everything can be blamed on teachers.

Education, in the format of school for children each weekday, is about mass production. Achieving an average reading age of 8 years old is all that is required.

Then people will be able to function in society, read firms and enter details

Nail on the head, especially with the simplification of books. Being able to "read the words" is completely different to understanding the meaning, even in plain writing rather then hidden meanings or nuance etc.

It's why so many adults can "read the words" on a formal letter from, say, a bank, but havn't a clue what it actually means.

It can be extended to numerical literacy, i.e. those who can read the words/figures on a bank statement or bill, but not actually comprehend what those words/figures actually mean.

Until you come across people who are seemingly numerate and literate superficially at least and then realise that they don't actually know what information is actually on a bank statement, i.e. monies in and out and balance, then you don't really appreciate the problem. Same with people who can't actually make sense of a bus or train timetable - they can see the table, the times, the places, but just havn't a clue how to comprehend what it actually means. These are people who appear completely "normal" in real life and who you wouldn't think would have such problems, but there's a complete lack of understanding/comprehension.

I've always thought the 11+ exam was a pretty good marker of functional literacy and numeracy, and that's set for 10 year olds! It's very highly based on actual understanding and comprehension, logic, etc.

I think schools have really dropped the ball. "Comprehension" these days is all about fiction, poems, etc. Go back a few decades and a "comprehension" in English language could have been set on a recipe, or an appliance instruction booklet, etc., i.e. real life relevant and factual. Same with maths, yes, compound interest is "taught" as part of GCSE, but it's all theoretical and equation based - it's not taught in simplistic and accessible terms in a way that it's understandable by the lower half of the cohort.

People leave school being able to read, then never pick up another book; therefore never expanding their knowledge of new words.
My DP has never read a book since he left school 34 years ago, by no account a stupid person but his vocabulary can be lacking and does ask me the context/meaning of words.
The decline of reading for leisure is sad, I've always been a voracious reader and find it very enjoyable.

You may well have a good point there. I enjoy playing along when it's a specialist subject that I also know something about (I loved the one a while ago where a contestant chose Still Game!); but if it's about something like Arsenal goalkeepers of the 1960s, my eyes and ears glaze over and I've no idea how difficult or not they may be if you care and know about the subject - and (as you say) have been able to revise it extensively.

There's also quite a big range in how specific or broad the specialist subjects are - and how niche.

I remember reading once about a man who was leader of some obscure little society, who was approached by the programme for assistance with suitable questions on that extremely specialist subject that a contestant had chosen. He politely declined to help, as he was the contestant!

I suppose it's all quite self-indulgent really: "Ask me about stuff I know, in order to crown me the smartest, but exclude anything else!"

Haven't RTFT but it looks like the OP at least hasn't posted any source for this statistic as yet. Perhaps someone else has.

For a statistic to be an average it means that many people are well below it. So, for all the highly literate adults (which I assume would include all graduates and anyone in any kind of legal/ education/ analysis/ medical/ journalism/ government roles that involve reading complex texts) there have to be adults with "reading ages" well below 9-11. Whatever "reading ages" actually means.

What is more interesting is whether it's going up or down. Are today's school leavers more literate than the boomers? I'd suggest it's likely to be the boomers that are lower in ability because they may not have been using the skill and let it lapse.

It's not a high enough level though. Being able to "read a form" isn't good enough. The reader should be able to comprehend/understand what the form is asking and be able to decide what information is required, whether the form is relevant, etc.

Until you see how people actually complete forms, you can't understand how poor some people are at doing what should be something simple. I.e. filling in an irrelevant form because they've not read the instructions at the top and should be using a different form, not completing all required fields, putting wrong data in fields, etc. Even the simplest of things like getting first name and surname the wrong way round, or putting in your date of birth when the form says child's date of birth, etc. Then sending it back to the wrong place when a return address is actually clearly stated at the bottom of the form.

I wonder if good writing and reading skills were consider posh in UK. I've seen many times people referring to class when talking about it and education.
It does make me wonder if it's simply a case of non-posh people not wanting to seem posh to their peers (and probably get bit bullied) so they simply keep at lower level?

I remember reading somewhere that in early 2000s about 30% of people were functionally illiterate in UK. Fascinating actually, as I came to UK at that time and it was always considered greatly developed country so I expected funtional life skills to be really high if that makes sense.

Mind me, my English isn't perfect either as ESL... 😳

I just googled how to cube a number, as I had no idea. Maths related concepts don’t tend to stick in my head and it’s been 25 years since I was last in a classroom struggling with it. It’s not something I’ve ever needed as an adult either, so no opportunities to revisit or reinforce the knowledge.

Yet I can read and write at a high level (or at least I could until perimenopause and the brain fog started). DD seems to have inherited this ability, as at 11 she has an estimated reading age of 17+. Sadly she doesn’t seem to like reading for pleasure as much as I do (I go through 3 books a week), but the skill is there.

Which is why KS2 SATs test just that. You can’t pass the papers just being able to bark out text.

Best post I read on MN.

Doesn't surprise me at all. I did some work a few years ago with adults who were trying to improve their maths and English and there are large numbers of such people. Lots of them are not young and they went to school in the era when dyslexia and mild learning difficulties were not recognised and such children were left at the back of the class and didn't receive much help.

The people who came to our classes were just the ones who were prepared and able to try - lots of illiterate people are ashamed and hide it, or are unaware of the help on offer. I did some census work where I would visit houses who had not completed their census and often only after several visits the householder would admit they couldn't read well enough to complete the form and would ask for help. All these people I saw were English first language.

“The test results indicate you have lumps.”

oh no.

”Correction: mumps. You have mumps.”

He politely declined to help, as he was the contestant!

That's funny!

Well there are different levels of reading comprehension.

If you give an average 9 year old a book by Charles Dickens, or the Times newspaper, they are not going to understand it.

If you give them a Horrid Henry book they'll be fine.

Surely you can see there is a difference in the level of complexity of language and comprehension skills required to read and understand things that contain longer words/ sentences, or more complex ideas.

I wouldn't expect an average 10 year old to read and understand the terms and conditions of an insurance policy, but an adult is expected to insure their vehicle appropriately. You need adults able to understand the highway code. Even signs such as parking or bus lane instructions can be suprisingly complex to work out. Definitions such as the distinction between parking and loading, "no return". Terminology can be a bit obscure compared to regular spoken language "adverse camber" aka, "slow down more than you'd expect because the road surface is angled the wrong way."

A 10 year old having the reading age of a 10 year old is fine. They've got 6+ years of education to go and continue developing before starting basic adulting. As brilliant an age 10 years olds are (Cubs and Brownies are great!), I really wouldn't trust a bunch of sixers to run the world. There's a lot of development of logic, nuance and consequence to go.

To be fair, mumps are rather lumpy

I write, and I don't submit to publishers any more, because they demand too low a level of literacy in most cases (this is not the same as being required to write clearly or plot well).

If I compare my work to modern good writing guides, then to, say, Pride and Prejudice, it's closer to the latter in terms of complexity of text. Yet P&P isn't especially florid or purple prose.

I agree about comprehension of things like mathematical concepts also. I was taught standard deviation as a formula, essentially. I had no real sense of why I was turning one set of numbers into the other. It was only when I was taught it in geography then finally biology that the effect of doing the sums was properly explained.

Rounding off these thoughts, there's also an element of gender-based socialisation going on. Having specialised in the early years, I'm very keen for my son to get lots of practice at fine motor skills, drawing and creative, imaginative play.

For presents and toys, I focus on art materials, crayons, dress up, music etc. Because I know that no one else in the family will get him that stuff, and it's a big part of the reason when boys lag girls in writing etc. He's received three different balls at Christmas, and yeah, he likes to kick a ball. But he also loves to draw and make marks.

Haha, well, luckily I am an AHP and not a Dr so the content of my letters is probably less impactful overall.