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Reading for pleasure at 14 to 16
Only about a third of 14 to 16-year-olds enjoy reading in their free time, although the figure rose in 2026. Choice, audiobooks and a fixed time of day all help, and the English Language exams are built on texts your child has never seen.
In the National Literacy Trust’s 2026 survey, 35.0% of 14 to 16-year-olds said they enjoyed reading in their free time, up from 28.6% in 2025. Daily reading in this age group rose from 14.0% to 16.4%. The trust heard from 125,375 children and young people aged 5 to 18 in 479 schools across the UK.
Across all 8 to 18-year-olds, enjoyment rose to 36.1% from 32.7% in 2025, which was the lowest level in 20 years. The trust found the biggest rises among 14 to 16 and 16 to 18-year-olds. Even so, about one teenager in three in your child’s age group enjoys reading in their spare time, and fewer than one in five reads every day. Only 11 to 14-year-olds enjoyed it less, at 33.2%.
Why it matters for the Language papers
Both English Language papers are built on texts your child has never seen. AQA’s specification says: “All texts in the examination will be unseen.” Paper 1 is an extract from 20th or 21st-century fiction. Paper 2 pairs a non-fiction text from the 19th century with one from the 20th or 21st. Each paper lasts 1 hour 45 minutes, and the reading has to fit inside that time along with the writing.
Vocabulary is part of what is tested. After the June 2023 Paper 2, AQA’s examiners wrote that “It is likely that words such as ‘rancid’ were unfamiliar to some students”, in a question that tested whether students had picked up a writer’s dislike of the food he was served on a train. A teenager who reads widely has met words like that, and long 19th-century sentences, before the exam.
What helps
Let your child choose. In the trust’s 2025 survey, 1 in 4 young people aged 8 to 18 (26.6%) said they valued having the freedom to choose what they read. About 2 in 5 were motivated by reading linked to a favourite film or TV series (38.1%) or to their interests and hobbies (37.1%). A football autobiography, a manga series or the book of a show they are watching all count. For the Language papers, long magazine articles and travel writing count too.
Try audiobooks. In the trust’s 2026 survey of listening, 50.3% of young people who listened to audiobooks said listening feels like reading, and 36.6% said it had got them interested in reading. Listening with the book open helps with long sentences.
Give reading a fixed slot, with the phone in another room. Twenty minutes before lights out adds up over a term.
Let your child see you read. In a National Literacy Trust report published in 2022, mums (67.4%) and dads (60.2%) were the role models that children and young people aged 7 to 18 named most often. More than half of those with a role model (52.9%) agreed that seeing that person read “would make them think it’s okay to read”.
Keep it separate from revision
Free reading is your child’s own. Leave the set texts and the quizzing for revision time, and let your child pick, including books that look too easy or too short. If your child is in Years 7 to 9, English in Years 7 to 9 has more on reading at home, and Do students need to read the whole text? explains why the set texts need reading in full.
Sources
- National Literacy Trust, Children and young people’s reading in 2026 (June 2026) and the full report
- National Literacy Trust, Children and young people’s reading in 2025 (June 2025)
- National Literacy Trust, Children and young people’s audio listening in 2026 (July 2026)
- National Literacy Trust, Role models and their influence on children and young people’s reading (October 2022)
- AQA, GCSE English Language 8700 specification (version 1.5, October 2021)
- AQA, Report on the examination: GCSE English Language Paper 2, June 2023