Children’s enjoyment of reading, writing and maths drops

Source: Radio New Zealand

A national study has found New Zealand children’s enjoyment of reading, writing and maths has dropped, in some cases significantly.

The number of older primary school children who do not enjoy the subjects has doubled since 2018/19, as has the percentage who believe they are not good at them.

The figures come from the Curriculum Insights Study, which tested representative groups of children each year, and its predecessor, the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA).

The studies were conducted for the Education Ministry by the University of Otago and New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER).

They showed the percentage of Year 8s who said they did not like reading climbed from 8 percent in 2019, to 11 percent in 2023 and 16 percent in 2025.

In the same period, the percentage of Year 8s who did not agree they were good at reading was 6 percent in 2019, 4 percent in 2023 and 13 percent in 2025.

Year 6 students’ enjoyment of reading also dropped – with 11 percent saying they did not enjoy the subject in 2025, up from 4 percent in 2023; while 10 percent believed they were not good at reading, up from 2 percent in 2023.

Year 3 students’ enjoyment of reading improved – with 10 percent saying they disliked it in 2025, compared to 13 percent in 2023 – but the number who believed they were good at it fell from 15 percent to 8 percent, respectively.

However, the 2019 NMSSA had just 6 percent of Year 4 students disliking reading, and 3 percent believing they were not good at reading.

In maths, 9 percent of Year 8s did not like the subject in 2018, rising to 13 percent in 2022 and 19 percent last year.

The percentage of Year 8s who believed they were not good at maths increased from 9 to 12 to 19 percent in that period.

Researcher explains

One of the researchers, Sue McDowall from the NZ Council for Educational Research, said some of the drop might be because children were asked if they liked the subjects after completing a number of tests and previously they were asked as part of a survey.

Even so she said enjoyment was down across the board.

“We see internationally and in New Zealand a general overall downward trend in reading motivation over time.”

McDowall said the study did not show why enjoyment was falling, and there was not enough evidence to show if the decline had accelerated.

“There’s some speculation and hypotheses out there, also in the international literature, to do with screen time, for example, although we do have to remember that students do read on screens as well as on paper… but we don’t really know the reason.”

McDowall said the trend was important.

“It really matters. Let’s take reading again as an example. We know there’s a bi-directional relationship between being motivated to read and your achievement as a reader.

“It works both ways, so that students who are successful readers, who achieve well on reading, are motivated readers. And if students’ reading motivation is high, then they achieve well.

“So it’s really important that teachers not only focus on teaching children how to read texts and to make meaning of them and to critically analyse them and to use them to meet their own needs.

“It’s also important that teachers provide children with opportunities to engage with texts and to read for pleasure, to read to meet their own interests and needs, to become motivated readers and see reading as something that they want to do in their own time.”

Other perspectives

AUT associate professor Ruth Boyask said New Zealand was joining an international trend picked up by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) a few years ago.

“[In the] PIRLS report in 2021, there seemed to start to be for the first time some noticeable decline in enjoyment levels for children in New Zealand, and prior to that we were kind of bucking the trend really because reading enjoyment has been declining internationally for a while.”

Boyask said she had examined the NMSSA data in depth and it showed that children enjoyed reading more if they had control over what they read and less direction from teachers.

She said the government’s focus on structured literacy approaches to reading might be affecting that.

“There are differences of approaches that are being promoted within the educational and school environment at the moment that perhaps are moving away from children being more actively involved and engaged in their reading.”

The principal of Point Chevalier School in Auckland, Stephen Lethbridge, was critical of strict adherence to the structured approach but said it was too early to know if that was driving down children’s love of learning.

“What we do know as good teachers is that having quality books, talking about what kids are learning, especially at Years 4, 5 and 6 we’re getting into talking about themes, talking about what’s going on in stories and that may not be happening as much in the senior school anymore as they are also doing structured literacy at the moment.”

Auckland University associate professor Fiona Ell said the results could be influenced by the after-effects of the Covid lockdowns.

“We do need to think about what Covid means for people’s learning and their attitudes towards learning and learning in institutions and going back to school.

“All those things, I think, are having a much larger impact and a longer tail of impact than we perhaps realise.”

Ell said it was possible the new, more difficult maths curriculum introduced last year, together with a different approach to teaching maths, had affected students – but difficult work did not necessarily put children off learning.

“Plenty of enjoyment can come from the satisfaction of mastering something and knowing you can do it.”

Ell said it was also possible the government’s new English and maths curriculums were contributing to the decline.

“I suspect that students perhaps see less of themselves in these subjects, less opportunity for self-expression, for exploration. Children are naturally curious and interested.

“They have things to say, they have interests, things they want to read about, things they want to find out about, things that they’d like to work out mathematically and we’ve sort of eliminated the space for that.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/20/childrens-enjoyment-of-reading-writing-and-maths-drops/