Schoolchildren should read 50 books a year says education secretary
22 Mar 2011
MP Michael Gove says reading demands placed on English pupils has been "too low for too long".
Children as young as 11 should be expected to read 50 books a year as part of a national drive to improve literacy standards, according to Education Secretary Michael Gove.
He said pupils should finish the equivalent of around one novel a week and that the academic demands placed on schoolchildren in England had been "too low for too long".
The majority of teenagers read just one or two books as part of their GCSEs and Mr Gove said all schools should "raise the bar" by requiring pupils to read a large number of books at the end of primary education and throughout secondary school.
A report in December showed that reading standards among British teenagers had fallen from 17th to 25th in an international league table.
Mr Gove was speaking following a tour of charter schools in America.
One primary school in a significiantly deprived area of Harlem, New York, set pupils a one-year "50-book challenge".
The Infinity School, among almost 100 schools run by the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), was ranked higher than any other in the city, even though more than 80 per cent of its pupils were from deprived families.
Mr Gove said KIPP, founded by two teachers, had far higher expectations of students than British schools.
"We, the Coalition Government, have attempted to raise the bar but, I think, haven't been ambitious enough," he said.
"Recently, I asked to see what students were reading at GCSE and I discovered that something like 80 or 90 per cent were just reading one or two novels and overwhelmingly it was the case that it included Of Mice and Men.
"We should be saying that our children should be reading 50 books a year, not just one or two for GCSE."
A current review of the National Curriculum is expected to select the authors children should study during their education.
In the meantime, Mr Gove will be asking leading children's authors to set out the 50 books each child should read, with schools encouraged to issue the challenge to pupils.
ISBN: 9780140292916
By Simon Harrison
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