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!?

It doesn't surprise me. I did a 'Writing in Plain English for Lawyers' course and it was based on this fact. Apparently a lot of newspapers are pitched at that level too.

It's also fair to say mumsnet is just a discussion forum. I don't think people are producing their best work. They are often multi tasking with other things and only skim the first paragraph..

It is shocking how people simply don't read books anymore, it's almost become a niche activity. That's just how the modern world is though, I don't see it changing.

I don't see anything wrong with things like NHS guidelines written in simple language however, surely it's helpful for non-native speakers and those who read well but don't have the mental bandwidth to take in a complex text when it's another task in an endless to-do list.

Has he been tested for meeres-Irlen? It makes reading very tiring, despite good eyesight. My DD has it, and needs coloured lenses to help with reading. She is also dyslexic.

I was told many years ago, as a teacher, that the ability to read the Sun was the minimum level hoped for although obviously not the maximum level for those capable of it. This was long before SATs, Ofsted etc. So not much has changed if that OP is correct. I haven't read the whole thread.

23/24 Govt stats quote these figures:
“In reading, 74% of pupils met the expected standard, up from 73% in 2023.
In writing,* 72% of pupils met the expected standard,up from 71% in 2023.
In grammar, punctuation and spelling, 72% of pupils met the expected standard, *unchanged since 2023.”

These are classroom based, teacher-led exams and the achievement rates are still too low. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that students who will pull a school’s results down (second language learners, SEN students…) are “encouraged” not to be in on test days so the actual figures are artificially high. If schools didn’t hot-house their pupils I strongly suspect that the figures would be far lower.
This is a problem stemming from the primary school curriculum which expects too much from students and doesn’t mandate that every single student can read and write functionally by age 11.

Oh, I've never heard of that. I'll def look into that it though.

This is one of the problems here.

We kill that innate love of learning that all little kids have by throwing them in school age 4 and assessing and testing them and teaching them ‘to the test’. Learning becomes a chore. And we rob children of the right to learn to read and write (and do other subjects too) on their own timeline.

With regards to reading we turn it into a tick box exercise. Fill in the reading record, only choose (boring) books from the reading scheme, write a book review of every damn book you read etc. Little time left in a packed curriculum for reading time on the carpet every day with the teacher (this I remember fondly from my own junior school days in the 80s pre National Curriculum).

School today kills creativity as well as a true love of learning.

The other issue I would add is that millions of children are living in poverty today in the UK so books have become a luxury and reading not a priority for stressed out parents trying to put food on the table.

Is there any point in working out an average reading age?
Because my first question would be what is the maximum (best) reading age? If the maximum is capped at 16/18/21 as seems sensible (I don't suppose reading skills continue to increase throughout life) then a simple arithmetic average reading age will be quite low.

That said I have no doubt that literacy in the UK is worse than it should be

Off to get my reading level tested...

The equivalent numeracy level for adults is that of a primary school child (sometimes described elsewhere as a 9 year-old). This is one of the reasons why the 'average adult health literacy' level is reported to be so poor because it's a blend of numeracy and literacy.

https://plainnumbers.org.uk/why-start-with-numbers

I have not read all the posts, but I can read.
My 14 year old neighbour was assessed at school yesterday having g the reading age of a 9 year old. His Mum was appalled. She one pointed out to me I was lucky my 4 kids were all clever. I put a lot of effort into reading with them, supporting homework, talking about current affairs etc and not letting them spend all their time on games etc.
My DD2 has just completed a teaching degree and was in a local high school where the kids were rounded up at the end of the day to do extra reading intheir own time. 🙄.
Obviously they didn't want to do it and wanted to go home. As a teacher myself, those making decisions have no sense. Reading is the route to being able to succeed in all other subjects, it should be the main priority to establish good levels.
Spending time reading to your children establishes a good relationship with them and gives them an opportunity to learn in a fun way.

I can believe that. My local Facebook groups are full of people with bad spelling and poor grasp of grammar, especially the older generation.

Yeah comprehension is definitely something a lot of people lack, I used to think people were choosing to interpret things the wrong way in order to get pissy over nothing but now I genuinely understand they just can't comprehend what they're reading.

And Mumsnet is one of the websites where most users can spell/write really well (I know my own grammar isn't always up to scratch with everyone else's on here haha) head over to Facebook or X and you can see that most people can't even spell basic words.

I don't think you need to read a book to improve literacy. You just need to read.

My son has just received 3 firsts in essays at uni. I don't think he's read an actual book since school! He constantly read articles online though, history, science and technology type stuff. He didn't enjoy fiction.

Reading is reading in my opinion.

Are the tests the same / similar to those used in the past?

I'm dyslexic, but my school didn't believe in dyslexia. My handwriting is a mess and I was in a lower set for English. But I read, a lot.

At 13 / 14 the school did the reading age test, apparently I went off the scale, the teacher marking it asked other students who I was because she didn't know me.

SO if it is the same I'm giving my younger self a big shiny chufty badge.

I design digital products in the public sector and this is one of the guidelines, has to be in language a 9 year old can understand.

simple for everyone to understand then.

this is the case for all gov.uk websites and things like the NHS App

This is an excellent point.

I write books, novels, pure entertainment, not learned literary fiction or anything. I was horrified to receive a review of one which said 'I have a degree and I had to look up some of the words used,' and I often have remarks left on vocabulary being 'stretching' for readers or those who had to stop and work out from context what was meant.
In contemporary women's fiction! Written by someone (with a good degree, admittedly, but I work in retail...) who reads a lot but uses words that I expect any person with a general level of education or who reads other books to know.
These reviews aren't continuous, just occasional (or I would think it was me), but I think it indicates that many people have the merest cursory acquaintance with the written word.

It is shocking but this has always been the case. A lot people start to disengage from education at around this age if not earlier. Its a lot higher in deprived areas. I can remember in the 90S reading that 40% of school leavers in Bradford were functionally illiterate. I get the impression that things have actually improved with the adoption of IT.

The spelling doesn't matter so much and if you don't know a word you can google it, but it is the comprehension that worries me.

If someone writes "The Minister declined to end the practice"

There'll be people under it saying "at least he put a stop to it"

and "if he needs practice he shouldn't be in the job"

The solution would be to get kids interested in reading for its own sake. I was lucky because my favourite pastime as a boy was reading and the more you do it the easier it gets.

You can't make kids read. That makes it worse. You've got to give them books they will enjoy.

/had to remove an apostrophe 😀

The reality of the impact of a reading age of 10 would also differ depending on the cause.

If it's someone with a specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia, they may well have a spiky profile with other strengths, and develop workarounds that get past the hinderence.

Similarly a person working in an additional language will often also benefit from generally stronger cognition compared to reading age. They are likely to have more scope to develop their fluency with increased experience and immersion. (Between beginners Spanish, A-level French and general knowledge, I can work out the general gist of a written Spanish news article. I would lack nuance and detail, but could access the main points)

A person of below-average intelligence will struggle most with limited access to develop, limited coping strategies and often lack of support network (e.g. asking someone with stronger skills to proof read)

It's easy to get stuck in a spiral where improving literacy is difficult. Dyslexic DS 11 finds reading draining, so it's not pleasurable so that reduces natural exposure.

We started tutoring 18m ago, not so much to get him through SATs for their own sake, but because the curriculum expects him to have that range of skills (which then feeds into other subjects like MFL). Initially his reading age was a year behind at 9 (which is quite frankly terrifying to think of ploughing through adulthood at that level) and by the time he did SATs 9m later, he was closing the gap and reached RA10 at 10yo. He scraped the expected standard in SPAG and comfortably met it in reading. We've kept the tutoring going to keep boosting his skills, and now in KS3, he's focusing on comprehension and writing. He's verbally very articulate, but can't transfer the way he speaks into flowing written form easily. He has lots of little blind spots. While English doesn't have obvious specific word order rules like German, we do have conventions e.g. "A small, brown dog" vs "a brown, small dog" and breaking those leads to clunky expression even if it's not obvious why. It's the subtlties of comprehension that he struggles to pick up on, and needs to continue developing at a pace greater than school can offer to meet his general potential.

The focus of the education system is not helpful. The obsession with reading records until the end of y6 sucks the joy out of reading. I gave up filling them in. It wasn't that we weren't reading. We used audio books, sharing reading. Trying to keep pleasure in it and exposing DS to text beyond his reading age that he couldn't decode on his own.

The KS1/ KS2 emphisis on petty points of grammar is another joy sucker. It's not that grammar isn't important, but it's too soon. Children need to be confident to read and develop creative ideas first before they can really grasp the grammar that binds the text together.

Many children will come out of school having read little more than Kipper, Biff and Chip in terms of reading whole books. Schools increasingly don't have the budget to provide (or time to teach) whole books. GCSE texts are often reduced to studying some scene/ chapter excerpts and filling the gaps with the film version. DSs' school has an extended tutor time to allow free reading, but the reality is that despite being bought books to match their interests and ability level, they take in stunt books, open at random, skim through some pages and repeat at a different point day after day.

My children are lucky ones. They've grown up in a reading friendly culture, we've been educated enough to recognise the nature of their difficulties, we've been able to pay for dyslexia assessment (there are no poor dyslexic children in my LA... if you don't have spare £££, tough shit 😞) we've been able to pay for aids such as prescription tinted glasses to ease eye strain and migraines, we've been able to pay for support. There are thousands and thousands of children out there struggling because their parents are not in a knowledge and finance position to invest into it, and the education system doesn't have the means to identify and target that level of support and aids.

I can't solve the way their brains process written information, but I can contribute to closing the gap so they're not behind and struggling to keep up with accessing information across the curriculum.

The strongest indicator of a child's education sucess is the education level of their mother. That means literacy very easily becomes an intergenerational issue.

@SailorSerena To be honest, that would not surprise me at all, judging by the horrendous spelling and grammar I see on this site!!

I was reading my parents newspaper at that age- mind you it was the Daily Express so more of a comic really about the royals and slebs!

Reading as a form of escapism is probaby not a popular thing I guess, given that the supposed average person has a reading age of 10. But I think it certainly does begin at home too, I remember my mum teaching me to read in the way phonics are taught today, and I could read aged 4 before school.

My DD aged 14 is probaby better read (Jane Austen, George Orwell et al) than a lot of people, and her writing is absolutely exceptional. Her vocabulary and prose reflects her reading, and it shows how it really does make a difference if you read widely.

I think she probably inherited my ability to write well, but on a level that's much higher - Oxbridge level higher. I'm in awe of her sometimes.

If the maximum is capped at 16/18/21 as seems sensible (I don't suppose reading skills continue to increase throughout life) then a simple arithmetic average reading age will be quite low.

Of course reading skills can improve with age beyond 16. The required reading skills for A level, degrees and PhDs are higher than the average 16 year old.

Even at a more informal level it's common to talk about being the right age to read certain novels or books because your life experience contributes to your understanding. Or as Gen Z like to say 'it hits differently'. If you take a children's classic like Tom's Midnight Garden then a child can understand in simple plot terms what the ending means but an adult has a far greater understanding of the emotions felt by Tom and particularly Mrs Bartholomew. I went to see a play of it and all the adults were wiping away tears at the end and there were kids saying 'why are you crying?' That's a very simple example of course but there are lots of classics that are read differently at different ages as people's comprehension skills change.