Farshore has launched a major new ‘Storytime in Schools’ research project to test the impact of daily storytime on children’s attainment and attitudes to reading. 20 schools from across the UK are participating in the twelve-week study, with 3,000 children in Years 3, 4 and 5 experiencing a daily storytime for one term.

The study will see teachers read to children for at least 20 minutes each day, purely for enjoyment with no formal teaching attached, to measure the impact on children’s motivation to read for pleasure independently. Alison David, Consumer Insight Director at Farshore said, ‘The hypothesis is that reading aloud to children at school when there are no expectations like work sheets or tasks makes children associate reading with fun, not learning. It reduces the pressure and allows children to relax, enjoy and listen, which in turn enthuses and motivates children to read for pleasure independently.’

Each school taking part will receive 200 free books from Farshore and HarperCollins Children’s Books, curated by reading experts David Reedy, former President of the UK Literary Association and Professor Teresa Cremin and the Reading for Pleasure team at the Open University. The study is being managed by Education Research expert Melissa Mackinlay, with Professor Cremin acting as a consultant.

Chris Soul, Year 4 Class Teacher at Watford St John’s C of E School, said participation in the study ‘offered our new, growing school in Watford a unique opportunity to prioritise storytime as part of our developing culture of reading for pleasure and progress. Measuring the impact of this project will help us to better understand how to improve children’s life chances and academic success through a love of reading and exposure to a range of diverse, exciting stories.’

The project expands Farshore’s previous ‘Stories and Choices’ study with a state primary school, which showed that when children experienced daily storytime it increased their enthusiasm, motivation and wellbeing. Over the project’s five-month period the participating Key Stage 2 children’s comprehension grew at twice the expected rate. The impact of reading aloud has also been shown in the home environment, where children whose parents read aloud to them regularly are more likely to read for pleasure themselves. When 8-13s are read to weekly, 28% of them read independently for pleasure daily or nearly every day, but when they are read to daily or nearly every day, 76% read independently daily or nearly every day^[1].

Cally Poplak, Executive Publisher at Farshore, said, ‘Our mission is to make every child a proud reader through a broad and diverse portfolio and Farshore is committed to investing in research to understand the motivations and barriers to children reading for pleasure, which has a direct link to children’s life chances. We are delighted to launch this study to increase our understanding of how to arrest the decline in reading for pleasure and give more children the advantages that come with being a reader.’

Results of the survey will be shared in Autumn 2023.

[1] Nielsen BookData’s ‘Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer’ 2022