Ireland’s falling reading rates: ‘There’s a crisis of literacy. There’s a crisis of reading’
There is a three-man publishing house working out of St Joseph’s Boys National School in Rathkeale, Co Limerick . Cillian Moloney is the author, Frankie Walsh is the illustrator and Oisin Reidy the editor. So far the boys have completed three books, and are working on a fourth, in a series called The Crowtown Mysteries. The series centres around a crow and a frog on a crusade to win back water for the town they live in. On the way, they encounter the dastardly Acorn King, get sucked into a video game they must play their way out of and are teleported into a castle by a cookie before becoming the leaders of a broccoli army. “The fourth one is in progress, we can’t give too much away. We can just say it’s water-based,” the third-class students say. The boys at St Joseph’s, who range in age from eight to 12 years old, are enthralled by books and reading – just not in the traditional way. The audiobook has transformed the way they consume books, offering another avenue into literature through phones. Some 70 per cent of the school’s population come from the Traveller community, with many other students having English as a second language. A large proportion of the boys are travelling across Europe and elsewhere for parts of the year, and miss a lot of class time while they’re away. On top of this, they often do not have access to a library, or their own books. “They wouldn’t have books with them, but they all have their phones, or they all have an iPad. They now know that they can install BorrowBox on their phone and listen to an audio book,” principal Hilary Pratt says. The school, in one of the most deprived areas of the State, stands as an example of how educators can turn the tide on declining reading rates among children, and foster a love of books from an early age. Irish teenagers getting weaker at maths and reading, new international research shows But the scale of the challenge across Ireland, and globally, cannot be underestimated. “There’s a crisis of literacy. There’s a crisis of reading. There’s a crisis of how we understand information clearly. I genuinely worry about it, a lot,” says children’s author Shane Hegarty. “It’s something that’s really clear to me that there is an issue with kids reading, the number of them reading, I would say the level of the reading,” Hegarty says. The data backs this up. Last week the latest report of the Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) rankings , run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), was released – and its findings around reading were damning. Teenagers, both in Ireland and globally, are much worse at reading than they were 10 years ago. This isn’t just a blip in the data; reading scores have been declining consistently over the last number of reports. It found the reduced capacity of students to read carefully and with sustained attention was playing a leading role in this decline. Students were more likely to read in haste, rushing through blocks of text to give quick but incorrect answers. They struggled more than ever with reading longer texts, which required higher-order cognitive skills and more focus over longer periods. “We cannot say for sure, but skimming social media feeds and rapidly processing information may be contributing to worsening ability and motivation to engage with complex texts and data,” the OECD said. Summing it up, the OECD said the declining trends in reading were “pervasive” and “primarily reflect a decline in focus and attention”. It called on education systems globally to re-engage young people with reading – because it is more important now than ever. How Irish schools are combating the decline in reading While Ireland still punches well above its weight in the international reading league tables – we are the first in Europe, and seventh globally – the trend of decline has been noted in several other domestic reports. Children’s Books Ireland carried out a study, through the polling company Ipsos B&A, in December 2025 looking at children’s reading enjoyment by age, and the reading habits of parents and carers at home. They spoke to 666 parents across the island of Ireland, in relation to 1,197 children. They’re reading more illustrated books, and they’re reading more simple books Shane Hegarty, Children's author What they found might not be surprising: children are reading much more in their free time during their primary school years than they are when they reach secondary school. The percentage of children who said they never read for fun was just 11 per cent in those aged between five and 12-years-old. That almost doubled, to 19 per cent, for 13 to 18-year-olds. The research also found that boys read less often than girls across all ages. They also found a correlation between parents who read frequently themselves, and the reading habits of their children. Daily reading among children stands at just below a quarter (23 per cent), but increases to almost half (46 per cent) when focusing on children of parents who read daily. The biggest barrier faced by parents in getting their children engaged in reading was their preference for other forms of entertainment at home, such as TV, phones and game consoles. Many children get their first smartphone towards the end of primary school, or at the start of secondary school. CyberSafeKids’ latest annual report shows smartphone ownership jumps from 36 per cent in eight-12 year olds, to 93 per cent in 12-15 year olds. Hegarty, who visits schools and communities to give talks and workshops and hosts festivals on children’s literature, has seen first-hand the impact screens have had on children over the last decade. “I’ve been writing children’s books since 2015, and have seen the encroachment of devices [on children] getting younger and younger. “There’s a definite change in the kind of books they’re reading, the length of books that they’re reading, and the level of English that they’re reading. They’re reading more illustrated books, and they’re reading more simple books,” he says. While he is keen to point out that some of these shorter, more heavily illustrated books are good, and he has read them with his own children, he feels they are catering towards an increasingly visually-minded readership. “Graphic novels have become huge, and I would definitely see that as being part of this generation that is very visual in terms of how they take in information. They are constantly looking at images,” Hegarty says. The concern is that if younger readers, particularly boys, do not branch out into longer, less illustrated, novels before they reach secondary school, then they may never return to reading later in life. “I do really believe that by giving them a wider range of reading at a younger age and getting them interested in books, and accepting that there will be a point where they hit an age where they will find it really difficult to read for pleasure ... But if you can get them a grounding in it, and actually introduce them to a range of stories, my experience is that they can come back to it later on in life,” Hegarty says. It’s about really being able to put the book in the students’ hands Daragh Nealon, St Joseph's Secondary School principal So what are schools doing to try to keep young people engaged in reading, particularly past primary school? In St Joseph’s Secondary School in Rush, Co Dublin, management has decided to confront them with books at every turn – literally. It started as more of a practical decision, because they needed the library as a classroom. The school is built for 400 students but currently has 1,000 children enrolled, so space is tight. To mitigate this, they moved the bookshelves out on to the corridors, but in doing so have created something quite special. Children eat their lunch around books, they can pick one up when crossing from one class to another, they are surrounded by books every hour of every day they spend in the school. “It’s about really being able to put the book in the students’ hands. We’ve a real interest in making sure our students actually want to read for pleasure,” principal Daragh Nealon says. They run a Let’s Read programme for four weeks every January for non-exam classes, where students spend 30 minutes every day reading whatever books they want during class time. There is also a wellbeing module for first, second and transition year students called Book Worm, where students get one hour of class time a week just for reading. They organise trips to the library in the town for first years, too, where they get the students signed up with membership and used to its environs. I like the idea of being a Reading Champion – it implies that I myself have conquered the art Children’s Books Ireland gifted the school 350 books, and the school allowed the students themselves to pick what they wanted. Student buy-in is important to those running the literacy programmes in the school, with deputy principal Ciaran Reade saying they did not want reading to become just “associated with a curriculum”. “This was the complete opposite: they had full choice and full autonomy as long as the book was suitable and appropriate,” Reade says. Ann Marie Caulfield, Additional Educational Needs Co-Ordinator at the school, agrees: “All of the research will tell you that you need to have student agency. They need to be in charge of their own learning, and if they’re not in charge of their own learning, then it’s just not meaningful. So, if they have agency to buy their own books, then it’s a meaningful library.” It is clear from speaking to the students themselves that they read what they fancy, not what they’re told to. The Ultimate Football Heroes series has been flying off the shelves since the World Cup – they cannot keep the Lamine Yamal one in stock. Kwaku Anno-Asante has read five in the series, but his favourite book so far is You Can Do It by Marcus Rashford, an inspirational guide for young teenagers based on the footballer’s own life experiences. For Anno-Asante, he says it made him feel “seen”, and he could relate much of it to his own life – a key need for teenagers navigating a very changed world to that of their early childhood. There was another benefit. “Reading really helped me get off my phone. Being addicted to your phone is really bad. Like it can actually rot your brain a lot,” he says. Twins Pippa and Darcie Armstrong are also conscious of the time spent on their phones, and feel the focus on reading in school is encouraging them to put the devices down more, and pick up books instead. “It’s getting more and more into a routine. I hope that in the future, and we’re already doing it now, but that we can just go home and pick up a book, instead of our phones,” Pippa says. “I think if you’re picking up a book that you like and you’re interested in, it’s just much more interactive, more calming,” she continues. “Much more calming,” Darcie concurs. References to “calm” come up frequently in our discussion with children about reading. Holly Boswell is a fourth class student at St Joseph’s in Rathkeale. He oozes with enthusiasm for the books he has read on his audio apps, describing with fervour and at length the plots, characters and themes of The Christmas Pig by JK Rowling, but particularly his favourite book ever – The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. “There’s very sad bits and very happy bits, there’s funny bits, it’s like all the feelings. If you read more and more, you’re gonna get happy and sad, and like all emotions are gonna come out. “It helps me be patient, because I’m not patient. You sit down and you listen to what you’re doing. It’s like, it just makes you calm,” Holly says. Holly (10) is a child who has had a whole world of reading opened up to him through audiobooks, and his teachers are keen to validate all types and methods of reading in order to show them the joy storytelling can bring. “Reading is reading is reading,” teacher at St Joseph’s in Rathkeale, Laura Williams says. “If that is a graphic novel, if it’s nonfiction, if it’s anything to do with Minecraft or whatever, if they’re picking up a book and they feel that joy, then we’re all about that,” she says. “There’s children in younger classes that see the older kids writing their own books, and now they’ve started doing it, so it’s really making books cool. That’s what we’re trying to do because if you love something and if it’s a passion, then it has to be organic. You can’t force that on somebody. And the children here, I definitely think they’ve caught the bug,” Williams says. Speaking to the children in Rathkeale,it is easy to see she is right – they have caught the bug. Castles, conspiracies and communism: thought-provoking back-to-school YA reads Such atmospheres are in no small part due to the huge efforts being made by passionate teachers, in Rathkeale and Rush and elsewhere. But it is clear to see how, without this kind of sustained effort, reading can so quickly fall by the wayside. If we are to tackle the rise in devices, the shortening of attention spans and the drop in literacy rates it will take a whole of society approach to ensure all children like Holly can benefit from the calming effect of reading. Back to School Books for all ages Children’s Books Ireland Publications manager Ruth Concannon selects her favourite school stories published by Irish authors and illustrators this autumn. A Day Off School by Oliver Jeffers, illustrated by Kevin Waldron (HarperCollins Children’s Books) This vibrant picture book follows young Herbie as he stays home from school. Through stunning two-page spreads, the narrative transitions from the initial novelty of a day off school to the creeping anxiety of missing out. The story masterfully explores the “grass is always greener” syndrome. Waldron shines as Herbie’s mind wanders, the pages erupting into a kaleidoscope of fantastical imagery. Ultimately, the book serves as a brilliant testament to the idea that boredom is the midwife of creativity. (Age 5+) Detective Thingy Majiggy by Cecelia Ahern, illustrated by Katie Saunders (HarperCollins Children’s Books) Talking to inanimate objects might seem strange, but what if they talked back? In Detective Thingy Majiggy we meet Mia, a foster child with just this gift. With the help of her hats, toaster and other everyday objects, she navigates her first days in her new foster home and school. Balancing the need to keep her secret safe, and with the help of her newfound friends, she sets out to solve her first mystery. With its engaging characters and thoughtful themes, this charming story is both entertaining and meaningful. (Age 8+) Squad Girls by Evanne Ní Chuilinn, illustrated by Hannah George (Gill Books) Squad Girls follows four besties as they navigate their dream of playing sport and athletics professionally. Tara, Ríona, Sam and Penny each are passionate and driven about different pursuits and must face obstacles in putting in the dedication needed alongside school and other commitments. Centring around friendship, the main theme of this book is an important one: that girls in sports should be supported and celebrated and, above all, that visibility, representation and inclusivity is key. A lively series starter with no sporty-girl stereotypes here. (Age 10+) The Victors by Wren James, illustrated by Beth Fuller (Walker Books) What happens to the chosen one once they’ve grown up? This story follows Dirk as he tries to settle back into ordinary university life after saving the world at just 14 years old. Unfortunately for him, his old wartime enemy, Medusa, is now his roommate. Beautifully illustrated, the characters carry the weight that war and trauma can have on a young adult. A refreshingly new take on old myths, encouraging readers not to bury their grief, but to live with it and grow from the ashes left behind. (Age 13+) Then We’ll Be Happy by Alan Carrigan (Chicken House) When 17-year-old Sam, who has cerebral palsy, is once again excluded from a class trip because the schoolbus is not wheelchair accessible, he decides to start a fundraiser to raise money for an accessible bus. While the bus may be the catalyst for this story, what unfolds goes far beyond any fundraiser. Carrigan does not shy away from the pains of disability, both physical and mental, yet, in all this, Then We’ll Be Happy is a story of resilience and hope. (Age 15+)