Leadership

Children and Young People’s Writing During the COVID-19 Lockdown in 2020

This National Literacy Trust report outlines findings relating to children and young people’s writing in 2020, in addition to findings from a survey of children and young people’s writing during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Children and young people’s enjoyment of writing is at almost its lowest level in a decade. Although there has been some improvement since 2019, and a significant jump in the number of children writing daily outside school, there is still work to be done. Since the onset of the global pandemic and lockdown, there has been a blurring of the boundaries between home and school.

This report outlines our findings on children and young people’s writing before and during lockdown. 58,346 children and young people aged 9 to 18 in the UK took part in our Annual Literacy Survey between January and March 2020, while 4,141 children and young people aged 8 to 18 in the UK took part in the survey during lockdown between May and early June 2020.

Key Findings:

Writing enjoyment

  • 2 in 5 (39.8%) children and young people said at the beginning of 2020 that they enjoy writing; this is an increase on the number of children and young people from the year before (35.8%)
  • 1 in 6 (17.5%) children and young people said they enjoyed writing more during lockdown than they had before

Writing frequency

  • After recording the lowest daily writing rate in 2019 since we started asking the question in 2010, the percentage of children and young people who say that they write outside class on a daily basis has recovered over the past year, increasing from 16.5% in 2019 to 21.5% in 2020
  • Additionally, 1 in 5 (21.4%) children said that they had been writing more in their free time during lockdown compared with before

Creative writing during lockdown

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