Firstly, well done to all students who received their exam results this month. The great sorting mechanism will now do its bit, but it is a big moment in our students’ short life thus far, a threshold, a way marker. A new path awaits.

In amongst the general trends, not just this year, but over a decade now, is the continued decline of English at A level – in all versions of the subject.

English literature entries dropped 4.7 per cent year-on-year (from 36,650 to 34,920) meaning it is the 11th most popular A level, sitting behind art and design. Meanwhile, English dropped 4.2 per cent (from 13,010 to 12,460), and English language and literature dropped 6.8 per cent (7,085 to 6,605).

If you combine these variations, overall there has been an 8.3 per cent decrease in the study of English at A level since 2019.

At the same time, recent surveys from the National Literacy Trust reveal what most teachers could tell you from their experience on the ground, namely that children don’t read as much as they used to. According to their 2025 survey, just 1 in 3 (32.7%) children and young people aged 8 to 18 said that they enjoyed reading in their free time in 2025. This marks a 36% decrease in reading enjoyment levels since the Trust started asking about this in 2005.

From Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times last weekend, to Katherine Rundell on the excellent Radical Thinking podcast in July, it is now common to hear prominent journalists and writers weep and wail over this vertiginous decline. Liddle calls it ‘The De-Enlightenment’.

I was lucky enough to have a whole hour with Michael Morpurgo earlier this year. What a brilliant mind he has. We discussed many things but the thing that made us both spit feathers was reflecting on the technocratic vandalism of reading that can be dated back to the National Literacy Strategy at the turn of the century. When I started teaching, I used to read to my class without interruption (well maybe to wake one or two of them up, but otherwise you get my drift*). Now, teachers have been trained to dissect every paragraph, load it with questions and in the process completely suck any enjoyment out of the poor, innocent book. Morpurgo, a primary school teacher for ten years, used to read to his pupils at the end of each day. He recounted the pleasure it gave him, to read to a captivated classroom, sharing the joy of stories.

Reading for pleasure? Nowadays, some reading lessons are excruciating, and I’d be praying for the playtime bell myself. Reading has become yet another rich mineral to be extracted by the JCB of exam fidelity, where it is broken up into domains, competencies, or assessment criteria. Lessons will often begin with…to get a greater depth mark, your response to the text needs to contain the following…etc etc.

Whilst our teaching methods have not helped, I am under no illusions that the main reason for the drop in enjoyment is simply attention, or lack of it. When faced with a choice between Tik-Tok and ‘The Railway Children’ there is usually only one winner, and it’s not Albert Perks. I’m not quite sure where we go with this, but banning phones for under-14s has to be a good start.

However, there is another element to this war on literature, one that has more to do with perception and culture. People ask, what I am going to get from it? Literature is reduced to a transaction. What’s in it for me?

Young people see the study of literature and language as placing them at a disadvantage in the jobs market. The perception is that it only leads to jobs in academia, journalism or teaching and they therefore dismiss its study. Adults of all ages have not only been seduced by a barrage of technology themselves, but also by the trend of evidence-based thinking that has been given near-reverential status. In an age of deep uncertainty, we cling to the veneer of certainty delivered by maths and physics. And we also advise our children to steer clear of English – ‘there’s no money in that, son.’

This is so bone-headedly wrong that it makes me want to weep. What we learn from literature is thrilling, profound and amazing. It tells us so much about politics, society, history, people. It helps us to communicate, to compare, and then to create and imagine. It nurtures the brain and provides nutrients to our soul, or as Salman Rushdie says (he actually said this about all art), ‘it stands as the essence of humanity.’ It is what brings us to life, and to see it reduced to some sort of bitcoin, exchanged in return for a credential, or a slightly higher salary, is idiotic.

And even if we are looking at a transactional take on this, I am certain that it provides knowledge and skills that are exactly those that employers are looking for. Reading books provides us with reference points, the chance to weigh up different opinions, understand nuance. Reading heightens the emotional intelligence and communication skills that are so needed in our fast-changing world.

But ultimately, reading books, alone or with others, is a source of great pleasure and to deny it to our children is an act of harm, an act of neglect.  

Literature is dying on the battlefield, and we all need to rush to its assistance quickly and wheel it back to safety.

*I am being too self-deprecating. In July, I ended up chatting to a past pupil in the local pub. She is now in her mid-thirties but told me in uncanny detail about listening to me read ‘The Hobbit’ in Year 6. She could recall atmosphere, words and phrases, the impact it had on her.

It does matter.