What I love about this time of the year is what I am sure everyone is excited about - Christmas and the summer holiday period that surrounds it. One thing I really enjoy about this holiday break is the opportunity to relax and for me it gives me an opportunity to take time out and read a book.
Just recently it was reported the top-selling book in Australia was a colouring book for adults and as more of our daily lives are consumed by living in the online space our reading habits change. There is nothing wrong in engaging with a colouring in book or scrolling YouTube, TikTok and Facebook, but I feel we are losing the skill of applying our full concentration for a lengthy period of time as would be required if devoted to reading of the longer form. Behind all the online noise and disorder lies a stark, often overlooked reality: fewer people—both children and adults—are reading books.
A 2023 national survey found more than one-quarter of Australians didn’t read a single book that year, with non-reading rates even higher among young people. Every demographic has experienced a decline in reading since 2012, according to data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. Another study from Deakin University revealed 29 per cent of Australian teens don't read for fun. This mirrors a global pattern of younger generations reading fewer books and the growing concern for the rapid decrease in literacy rates in adult Australians.
Last year, the Grattan Institute’s Reading Guarantee report sounded the alarm on growing illiteracy in Australian schools, calling for urgent measures. It urged schools to prioritise phonics-driven decoding techniques when teaching children to read. The report also shows the importance of reading as an essential building block for success in other literacy domains, such as Writing, Spelling, and Grammar, and in other subject areas, such as History, the Arts, Maths, and Science. For example, research suggests reading skills are correlated to performance in Maths and Science.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has repeatedly found that a student’s enjoyment of reading, rather than the amount of time spent doing it, is what most strongly predicts achievement. Students who like reading consistently perform better, and that enjoyment is the true distinguishing factor. Without the sustained attention that reading builds, we’re left only with borrowed imagination and ready-made ideas presented as complete thoughts. Engaging with written text requires us to follow a line of thought, a process that demands strong skills in classification, inference, and reasoning. At IGS, our deliberate pedagogical approach of Explicit Teaching and delivering a structured literacy approach is at the cornerstone of how our boys have been able to defy the trends in literacy outcomes.
The development of thinking for yourself is such a critical element for us to make better decisions in our daily lives. Maintaining cognitive health is so important and building that capacity of concentration can not be developed by scrolling through pages on an App. It requires us to sit and read a whole book.
So, for Christmas this year, I encourage the gift of reading, enjoy what jumps out of the pages and builds the skills that only sustained reading can give. For me it will be a book I have wanted to read for a while, Winston S Churchill’s “A History of the English Speaking Peoples, Volume One”.
Mr Tony Dosen
Deputy Headmaster