On May 22nd 2026, we hosted the second meeting of the Teenage Reading Network at Stewart House in Central London. Forty-six attendees from across academia, secondary schools, charities, publishers, government and more gathered to catch up on all the exciting updates that have happened since our first meeting back in 2023.
Research round up
The day started with a research round up session chaired by Dr. Harvey Wiltshire. Professor Jessie Ricketts gave an overview of the research and policy around teenage reading. She covered the Reading and Vocabulary project (link to page), and the work she has been doing in Blackpool to support reading there. She then covered the priorities identified in the last Teenage Reading Network meeting and how these are being addressed by the Student Voices project (link) and the two packages of Continued Professional Development she has been involved in (link). She then rounded off her talk by mapping these projects onto the teenage reading policy and practice landscape.
Professor Kathy Rastle gave an overview of the corpus work she and her lab have been working on to characterise the words that are used in teenagers’ books (link to papers). Across 1200 books, 100,000 distinct words were identified but 100 words made up 54% of the text in books, suggesting that children cannot make sense of texts without being able to decipher the rarer words that only show up once or twice per book. These 1200 books were then compared to 32 books from the GCSE English Literature courses, and it was found that these books were about half of the length but contains similar amounts of new vocabulary, again highlighting the importance of strong phonics and morphological knowledge in order for teenagers to successfully access texts.
The session was then rounded off by Professor Robert Eaglestone who gave a very interesting insight into the distinction between Literacy and English as a subject (and how the two terms are used interchangeably when they perhaps shouldn’t be…). A standout quote from his talk is that “English should be a place where reading for pleasure thrives, not a place that it goes to die”.
Practice and policy panels
After a networking lunch, the afternoon brought two panels highlighting practice and policy. The first panel focused on teenage reading, literacy and oracy and was chaired by Professor Jessie Ricketts.
Estelle Bellamy, Director for Learning in English at Fylde Coast Academy Trust, gave an overview of the initiatives they are using at FCAT to encourage reading for pleasure across their schools. These initiatives include “Recommended Reads” where teachers across the trust recommend books to the students, and “Big Up Your Book” where students have one minute to talk about their book and why others should read it.
Lucy Floyer, a freelance adviser specialising in English and Literacy, gave an overview of the practical and conceptual guidance she gives to schools regarding reading and oracy.
Amy Ford, one of the Directors of Derby Research School, gave an overview of the integration of reading, writing and oracy across the primary and secondary schools that they work with, through projects such as Priority Literacy and interviews with Year 9 pupils.
The second panel centred on teenage reading and the school curriculum and was chaired by Professor Robert Eaglestone.
Phil Stock, the Director of Greenshaw Research School, gave an overview of how he took a layered approach to upskilling his teachers on teenage reading support, by introducing reading initiatives one year at a time to target different aspects of reading across their school.
Dr. Rebecca Fisher, CEO of The English Association, who gave an overview of the work The English Association does to promote, support and celebrate English studies.
Nisha Tank, Head of School Improvement at the National Literacy Trust, gave an overview of the work the NLT are doing on disciplinary reading and how this relates to the Reading Framework and the Curriculum and Assessment Review.
We found it to be a thoroughly informative and invigorating meeting and we are hoping to repeat it soon – watch this space!
Where we have permission to share them, you can find slides for the talks below: