New research from the National Literacy Trust shows that children’s interest in writing has reached a “crisis point”, with the charity saying an “alarmingly low” level of children and young people enjoy writing.
In a survey conducted by the trust across the UK, just a third (34.6%) of young people aged eight to 18 said that they enjoy writing in their free time. Although three in four children starting school said that they enjoyed writing, this dropped to one in four by the age of 16.
The Children’s and young people’s writing in 2023 report is drawn from more than 70,000 responses from children to the charity’s annual literacy survey, which provides data on children’s activity, attitudes and enjoyment.
The number of children who said they enjoy writing in their free time has dropped by 12.2% in the 13 years since the NLT started collecting data, said the report, despite the fact that children and young people reported to researchers that they write to improve their mental wellbeing, for social connections and to support causes and issues they care about, as well as to promote creativity, imagination and self-expression.
“The decline in writing engagement should therefore be a cause for concern,” said the NLT’s report.
The low levels of writing enjoyment sit alongside statistics from the Centre for Social Justice that show a rise in children leaving primary school without reaching the expected levels in literacy.
More girls than boys enjoy writing in their free time, the research found. It also reported that more children and young people who received free school meals than those who did not enjoyed writing in their free time – a reversal of statistics from other research.
“Every year since 2010, the National Literacy Trust has consistently found that children on free school meals are more likely to engage with writing in their free time than their better-off peers,” said the report. “This trend has remained steady in the face of a global pandemic and an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis that has forced up the price of consumer goods and services at the fastest rate in four decades. This highlights the potential for writing for pleasure to play a vital role in the lives of disadvantaged children and young people.”
The most popular writing that children and young people did in their free time was text or direct messages, followed by in-game communications.
A quarter of children said they wrote fiction or short stories on paper in their free time, while one in five said that they wrote fiction on a screen. Three in 10 said they wrote in a diary, and the same number said they wrote letters in their free time.
Just under half (42.9%) of children and young people said that they would write to share a memorable experience, while one in four said that seeing people they look up to talk about writing would make them want to write.
“Providing children and young people with the opportunities to get inspired to write, either at school or in the community, can positively influence their enjoyment and frequency of writing in their free time,” said the report. “For example, more children and young people who had been to creative-writing groups or who had taken part in writing competitions said that they enjoyed writing and were writing daily in their free time compared with those who didn’t take part.
“The same was true for children and young people who went to see a storyteller or a writer, who attended book groups, or who went to books fairs.”
Among the home nations, children in Wales expressed that they enjoy writing in their free time the most, at 41.6%. This compares with 34.3% in England, 32.4% in Scotland and 23.2% in Northern Ireland. (The latter figure was based on a small sample size.)
Jonathan Douglas, the NLT chief executive, said that writing for enjoyment needed to be “encouraged, protected, and nurtured as a priority”.
“The reduced scope for creative writing in the curriculum may be affecting children’s motivation and enjoyment for writing, which can, in turn, affect their confidence and literacy skills,” he said. “We need to prioritise writing for enjoyment and recognise it’s important in helping children express their thoughts and feelings as they make sense of the world around them.”
