About the project
The project runs from April 2026 to January 2028 and is funded by the Nuffield Foundation.
Background
This project will evaluate the effectiveness of the Love to Read programme. It is a co-designed programme designed to increase children’s:
- reading motivation
- engagement
- volitional reading, and
- reading attitudes.
There are significant academic, social and emotional benefits associated with frequent and sustained book reading. This includes improved academic performance, and greater well-being.
However, children’s motivation to read is declining. UK children’s reading enjoyment and volitional reading are at their lowest point since 2005. Only 29% of children in the UK report enjoying reading, compared to 42% internationally. Only 32.8% of children aged 8-11 in the UK report reading daily outside of school.
Despite growing recognition of the need to support reading motivation and engagement, there is a lack of robustly evaluated, evidence-based resources to support teachers in fostering reading motivation, engagement, and volitional reading.
Objectives
This project will address this gap through a large-scale evaluation of the Love to Read programme. This programme integrates research-based principles to enhance reading motivation and engagement in schools.
The following aims guide this project:
- Refine the Love to Read programme and resources for optimal delivery at scale, ensuring sustainability beyond project completion.
- Evaluate the programme’s effectiveness in improving children’s reading motivation, engagement, volitional reading, and attitudes.
- Identify the factors – such as implementation fidelity, school, teacher, class, or pupil characteristics – that mediate the programme’s effectiveness.
Methodology
To evaluate the Love to Read programme, a Randomised Controlled Trial will be conducted in over 20 schools. Year groups within schools will be randomly allocated to either:
- deliver the Love to Read programme, or
- continue engaging in business-as-usual teaching.
In classrooms delivering the intervention, teachers will be provided with in-depth training and will deliver the Love to Read programme over 12 weeks. They will have the option of continuing delivery for a further 12 weeks.
Measures of reading motivation, engagement, volitional reading, and attitudes will be collected before the intervention, immediately after the intervention, and 3 months after the intervention has completed.
To evaluate the effectiveness of the programme, we will conduct comparisons in gains across groups in:
- motivation
- engagement
- volitional reading and
- reading attitudes.
Mediation and moderation analyses will be conducted to examine whether implementation factors (fidelity, length) and sample characteristics (of children, teachers and schools) impact effectiveness.
Contact us
Centre for Language, Literacy and Numeracy: Research & Practice (LLNR&P)
Department of Psychology and Human Development
UCL Institute of Education
University College London
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL
Image
Monkey Business via Adobe Stock.