Ed Balls joined the Prime Minister, children, writers, and reading champions at 10 Downing Street on January 9th to launch the National Year of Reading. He called for every employer, school, library, college and local authority to get involved and sign up.

The 2008 National Year of Reading is a year-long celebration of reading, in all its forms. It will help to build a greater national passion for reading - for children, families and adult learners alike. The Year will encourage people to read in businesses, homes, and communities around the country, providing new opportunities to read and helping people to access help and support through schools and libraries.

Campaigns and activities throughout the year will inspire everyone to read more, with a focus on reluctant readers, those with low confidence, and boys and dads. 146 local reading coordinators in local authorities across England will work with local education, community, library and leisure services, businesses and the media to deliver National Year of Reading campaigns and activity for their local communities.

Ed Balls said:

"I want every school, college, library and employer to pledge to join in with the Year of Reading by signing up online. If local communities, authors, broadcasters, celebrities and employers come on board we can really bring about a long-term change in the nation's attitudes to reading.

"Books are at the heart of the Year's activities but all reading 'counts'. Newspapers, magazines, poetry, song lyrics, screenplays and blogs will all feature as part of the Year's activities.

"There has been a huge amount of attention recently on reading at school, and rightly so. Every child must be able to read and write confidently; that is one of the highest priorities of this government. We are investing in high-quality phonics materials, free books for babies and children, catch-up support and small group tuition to help everybody achieve that goal.

"But the National Year of Reading is about much more than children's achievement at school. It is about the potential of reading to open doors.

"We need children, adults, and families to be reading because they love it and appreciate the opportunities that reading brings - not because people like me say it's important. And it's never too late to improve your reading skills.

"We're at an important point in the history of reading. Changes in technology are redefining the way that we read, write and communicate, and opening up the world of words to new audiences. Anyone can be an author, publisher or critic online, as well as a reader. But at the same time we're seeing huge interest in traditional forms of reading, with the help of publishing phenomena like Harry Potter which are rekindling young people's love of books."

Activities in the National Year of Reading will include the following themes:

April: Read all about it! Links to newspapers and magazines; library membership campaign.

May: Mind and Body. Reading and learning at work. The knock-on benefits of reading.

June: Reading escapes. Holiday and summer reads.

July: Rhythm and Rhyme. Poems, poetry and lyrics.

August: Read the Game. The influence of sport and how this can help promote reading.

September: You are what you read. Cultural, personal and local identity.

October: Word of Mouth. Storytelling, reading out loud, reading together, reading aloud, live literature.

November: Screen reads. Exploring the diversity of reading and writing; scripts, TV and films.

December: Write the future. Writing, texting, blogging etc.


In June 2002, the Office for National Statistics Omnibus survey found that:

Nearly half of adults had read at least five books or more in the previous 12 months.

A quarter of adults had not read a book during the same period, including almost half of males aged between 16 and 24.

 

96% said they had read something in the past seven days, whether books, magazines, newspapers or text messages. Reading material varied according to age: 70% of 16 to 24-year-olds had read a magazine, compared to 59% of 55 to 64-year-olds; 33% of 16 to 24-year-olds had read fiction, compared to 43% of 55 to 64-year-olds.

An online survey of 1432 workers, by the TUC for Quick Reads and World Book Day 2006, found that:

Only 23% of UK workplaces have borrowing shelves or book clubs. However, more than nine in ten employees (91.4%) would consider using a borrowing shelf or joining a book club if one were to be set up at work.

55.2% read or listened to audiobooks on their way to work, with fictional titles the most popular (32.6%), closely followed by newspapers (22%).

 

In March 2007, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council's Library and Information Update reported on a survey of 4,000 readers, which found that:

A third of those questioned read "challenging literature" in order to seem well-read, even though they couldn't follow what the book was about.

Almost half of respondents said that reading classics makes you look more intelligent. 40% said they had lied about having read certain books, "just so they could join in with the conversation". "Most people" said they would expand on their literary repertoire to impress a new date.

 

An international study of ten year olds' reading habits, the PIRLS 2006 report for England found that in England, compared to the previous study in 2001:

There had been a significant fall in the proportion of children in England reading stories and novels on a daily basis.

There was a highly significant difference in the proportions of boys and girls in England who claimed to read stories or novels every day. This includes 41 per cent of girls but just 23 per cent of boys.

In 2001-2 there were 270,775,000 visits to libraries. In 2005-6 there were 290,979,000 visits to libraries.

OFCOM report The Communications Market 2007 found that:

There were over 35 million blogs worldwide in April 2006 and a new one is created every second. In the UK 45% use webpages and blogs as a means to publish their own original material, and over one in ten comment on current affairs and political issues on their homepages and weblogs.