Teachers call for mandatory storytime in primary schools as HarperCollins study reveals benefits

New research from HarperCollins has found that storytime in primary schools can improve childrens’ reading age by 13 months, with the majority of teachers who took part in the study calling for it to be made mandatory.

Farshore’s “Storytime in Schools” research study, which comprised 3,000 children aged between seven and 10 (all of whom experienced a daily story time for one term) from across 20 primary schools in England found that 44% of children chose to read more as a result of experiencing daily storytime, and 77% of children want daily storytime in the classroom.

Of the teachers, 91% who engaged children in daily storytime want to continue doing so, and 88% would like it to be a curriculum requirement. There was also a marked increase in both reading and comprehension attainment.

The Year 4 children who took part in the study were evaluated using the Salford Test (the latest edition of Hodder Education’s standardised Salford Sentence Reading and Comprehension test) before and after the trial. Ninety percent of the participating schools found the average reading attainment across the sample increased from “average/age appropriate” to “well above average”, with 36% of the children gaining more than 13 months on their pre-trial reading age.

The comprehension attainment data for Year 4 children also showed a shift towards “excellence”, with 49% of the sample measuring “well above average/excellent” at the start of the trial, shooting up to 60% at the end of the trial. One school, with 59% of students on pupil premium, went from 4% of their pupils to 52% scoring “excellent”. Another school with 31% of students on pupil premium and 69% with English as Additional Language, rose from 29% to 61% scoring “excellent”.

The “Storytime in Schools” research project was devised to test the impact of daily storytime on children’s attainment and attitudes to reading, and to see whether an emphasis on enjoyment would encourage children to think of reading as something pleasurable and aspirational.

Several teachers said that they believed that their children were more emotionally literate by the end of the trial, and teachers reported observing the calming effect of being read to on the children, and that it helped children to focus. This was corroborated by the children’s self-reported feedback. When asked, at the end of the trial, whether they agreed that "storytime makes me feel calm", 65% of boys and 76% of girls agreed. Teachers also shared the positive impact on their own mental health and bonding with the class.

Alison David, reading for pleasure expert and consumer insight director, Farshore, said: “Given the impact that reading for pleasure has on children’s outcomes, and that storytime can help turn children into readers, this is a must-have debate. As a simple intervention, it’s clear that storytime is a low-cost, high-value proposition. It requires little or no training. It has an astonishingly positive effect on children’s motivation to read, reading and comprehension attainment and wellbeing.”

Professor Teresa Cremin, co-director, Literacy and Social justice Centre at The Open University, said: “What is particularly potent here is the professional flexibility offered within the set time, enabling teachers to be responsive to the interests and needs of their learners, and to sometimes read without discussion and at others to invite dialogue around the text. What is also very striking is the children’s accelerated progress in reading and comprehension, and the highly positive impact on their attitudes towards books, and their reading dispositions and behaviours.”

The full research can be read here.