Boys have fallen further behind girls at reading regularly and enjoying it during the UK lockdown, a study suggests.
The gender gap in the numbers of children who say they take pleasure in reading and who read daily appears to have widened, prompting fears that boys could be at risk of losing out as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Greater access to audiobooks at school and home may help re-engage boys with literacy, the report from the National Literacy Trust (NLT) and Puffin says, as findings suggest these are more popular with boys.
Fiona Evans, the director of schools programmes at the NLT, called for more schools to introduce “audio libraries”, and for fathers and grandfathers to be role models to encourage more reading among boys.
The research, based on surveys of children aged eight to 18 in the UK before and during lockdown, found that more girls and boys have been reading daily and have said they enjoy reading while at home.
The reading enjoyment gap between boys and girls has increased five-fold – from just over a two percentage point difference at the start of 2020 to an 11.5 percentage point difference during lockdown.
Three in five girls (60.2%) said they enjoyed reading during lockdown, compared with 48.9% before, while only 48.7% of boys said they enjoyed reading amid the pandemic, compared with 46.6% pre-lockdown.
More girls than boys said they read daily in their free time before the lockdown, and this trend has continued, with the gap between boys and girls in terms of their daily reading widening in the past months.
“It remains to be seen whether these changes are sustained or whether a return to school and a degree of known normality will help boys catch up,” the report concludes.
Slightly more boys (25%) than girls (22.4%) said they had listened to audiobooks more during lockdown, and more than half of these boys said audiobooks had made them more interested in reading.
The “cool factor” of audiobooks was likely to have played a part with boys, Evans told PA Media, as they could listen on their phone with headphones and do not have to share what they have chosen to read.
Audiobooks that are narrated by well-known actors can also help encourage boys to read, she added.
A total of 58,346 children aged nine to 18 in the UK were surveyed between January and mid-March 2020; and 4,141 children aged eight to 18 were surveyed between May and early June 2020.