During the pandemic-related school closures and lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, listening to stories, whether through audiobooks or podcasts, was a lifeline for many children and adults (see Best & Clark, 2020 and Best, Clark, Perry & Riad, 2022). Around this time, the National Literacy Trust also began asking children and young people about…

Listening to children's experiences of writing during the first lockdown in spring 2020, it became clear that for many it had been a time of increased creativity, with children writing everything from songs and stories to scripts, and some even beginning their own novels. Another prominent theme in the research last summer was that having more…

Research has shown that book ownership has a significant impact on life outcomes. In 2019, we found that that children who reported that they had a book of their own were not only more engaged with reading but also six times more likely to read above the level expected for their age than children who did not own a book (22% vs. 3.6%). We included…

The National Literacy Trust's research during the first national lockdown in spring 2020 showed that more children and young people said that they enjoyed reading and more read more often during lockdown compared with before the pandemic. Children and young people's comments suggested that this was because they suddenly had time to (re)engage with…

Young people often are asked what they want to be when they grow up. How do their aspirations change as students move through childhood and adolescence? To investigate the formation of career aspirations, we analysed 6308 questionnaires from 4213 students aged 8 to 18 years arranged in an accelerated longitudinal design. Using a person-centred…

This series of briefs draws on the findings of multi-country research based on first-hand migration experiences of 1,634 children and young people moving between Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt1 (available at www.unicef-irc.org/child-migration-hoa). The briefs highlight findings that can inform decision makers when designing child-sensitive…

Social participation represent one of the major outcomes of inclusive education. Students with additional support needs often encountered negative attitudes of social acceptance exhibited by their typically developing peers hindering their social participation in the educational context. This study explored the multicomponent structure of…

In April 2020, Scholastic, together with YouGov, conducted a survey to explore aspirations, family attitudes and behaviors around reading in China. The key findings of this research, based on a nationally representative sample of 1,210 parents and children, including 509 parents of children aged 0-5; and 701 parents of children aged 6-17, are…

This is one of the first studies of its kind to systematically examine processes influencing youth entry, retention, and dropout from sports. To accomplish this objective, the Women's Sports Foundation (WSF), in partnership with The DICK'S Sporting Goods Foundation, commissioned a national survey about the participation and experiences of youth in…

This report uses data from the National Literacy Trust's 2019 Annual Literacy Survey and the Great School Library Campaign to determine how many schools in the UK have had a writer visit in the last year, their reasons for organising the visit, and the relationship the visit had with children and young people's engagement with reading and writing.…