Reading classes for parents should be introduced at all primary schools to encourage them to read to young children, Sir Michael Morpurgo has said as the country’s laureates team up to demand government action.
Morpurgo and the other 11 children’s laureates from the past 25 years have written to the prime minister demanding a “national investment in books and reading for the under-sevens”.
The letter cites new research from BookTrust showing that only half of children aged one to two from low-income families are read to daily while only 42 per cent of children aged under seven have a bedtime story.
Other research by the charity shows that over a quarter of low-income parents with children under the age of seven find reading with their