ONE and a half million children will reach the age of 11 unable to read well by 2025 unless urgent action is taken to tackle the reading crisis, according to North-East academics.

The worrying situation has prompted leading charities, teachers, parents and businesses to form a coalition called ‘Read On. Get On.’

They are launching a national mission to support parents and teachers to get all 11 year olds reading well by 2025, meaning they can read, understand and discuss stories such as Harry Potter. The move has also been backed by publishers and their bestselling authors.

As part of this research, Save the Children commissioned Professor James Law and statistician Tom King, of Newcastle University, to carry out analysis of the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study of 18,000 children born in 2000 and assessed at regular intervals.

“What happens beyond the school gates and at home is critical,” says Prof Law. “Our work for this report shows that reading to and with children matters for both mothers and fathers, but the impact of father’s reading – particularly to children after they have started school – appears even greater.

“Children whose fathers read with them less than once a week at the age of five had, by the time they were seven, a reading level six months behind those who had been read to daily.”

He also found that children in homes with more than 500 books are on average more than two years ahead of those growing up in households with fewer than ten books.

A report by the coalition shows that England is one of the most unequal countries when it comes to children’s reading levels, second only to Romania in the EU.

The most comprehensive study of pre-school and primary school-aged children in a generation found disadvantaged children are the worst affected, with four in ten not reading well by the age of 11 – almost double the rate of their better off peers. The report also found they are not reading enough outside school, or with their fathers.

Read On. Get On aims to support parents to read with young children for ten minutes a day; urge the public to volunteer to help disadvantaged children improve their reading; build a powerful coalition of the county’s most influential organisations to support the mission and urge all political parties to back the campaign.