One of the most important elements to a child’s development is literacy. Foundations have been created here in the UK and around the world to study the importance of literacy and how we can improve the literacy rate of children throughout the world and they have found some remarkably interesting facts which have given the UK government something to focus on and improve upon. It has also given parents something to think about when it comes to their own children’s literacy.
Keeping that in mind, let’s take a look at some of these findings and see how they apply in our own communities. Let’s get started:
Important Children’s Literacy Statistics
- Currently, 15 million Britain’s are functionally illiterate and cannot read above a grade 5 level.
- 50% of adults cannot read a book written at a grade 8 level.
- 1/3 of young children, up to age 10, have reached the proficient reading level.
- 85% of juvenile offenders have problems reading.
- 1 out of 5 people in UK prisons can’t read.
- By age 2, a child’s brain is as active as an adult’s and by age 3 the brain is more than twice as active as an adult’s.
- The number of books in the home correlates significantly with higher reading scores for children.
- Children who are read to at least three times a week by a family member are almost twice as likely to score in the top 25% in reading compared to children who are read to less than 3 times a week.
- Children’s academic successes at ages 9 and 10 can be attributed to the amount of talk they hear from birth through age 3.
- Young children who are exposed to early language and literacy experiences prove to be good readers later on in life.
- Children who were read to frequently are also more likely to: count to 20, or higher than those who were not (60% vs. 44%), write their own names (54% vs. 40%), read or pretend to read (77% vs. 57%).
- Higher reading exposure was 95% positively correlated with a growing region supporting semantic language processing in the brain.
- Children in low-income families lack essential one-on-one reading time, and have only been exposed to 25 hours of one-on-one reading.
- Children who grow up middle-class families have been exposed to 1,000 to 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture book reading.
- One in six children who are not reading proficiently in grade 3 does not graduate from secondary school on time.
- 68% of UK grade 4 children read at a below proficient level, and 82% of those children are from low-income families.
Contact Playdays Academy
To learn more ways to ensure your child’s literacy, contact Playdays Academy today and speak with an early childhood development expert who can answer any questions you might have.
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