Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how her Department plans to measure the success of the National Year of Reading.

​An external evaluation of the National Year of Reading will be published in spring 2027. The department will work with the National Literacy Trust to consider the findings, including which interventions, programmes and other aspects of the National Year of Reading have worked well. The findings will help shape future policy decisions.

The National Literacy Trust’s 2026 Annual Literacy Survey, published this June, showed the first increase in children’s reading enjoyment in five years. The emerging interim findings also indicate that the National Year of Reading is having a meaningful impact: one in five adults recognise the campaign, and of those, three in five say it has influenced their reading. Additionally, the findings also show that seven million adults report that the campaign has positively changed their reading behaviours.