The importance of parents' own reading for 10-year old students' reading achievement in the Nordic countries

Abstract

The Nordic education model of an inclusive school for all aims at giving children equal, and excellent, opportunities for acquiring high levels of reading ability. It is well documented that both students' and their parents' reading interest is closely and positively associated with students' reading achievement. There is therefore cause for concern when reading interests seem to be in decline both among parents and among today's students. Family socio-economic background is also well known to relate strongly to students' reading achievement. Especially children of parents with low education are likely to be deprived of opportunities of beneficial reading activities, such as seeing their parents read, being read to by family members, and learning to enjoy reading for themselves in the early years of school. On the other hand, it is possible that parents who enjoy reading and/or read much at home, provide their children with a basis for acquiring good reading skills, regardless of their educational background. Our article analyses data from four cycles (2001-2016) of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and several Nordic countries, in order to establish whether parental reading can compensate for low parental education levels. We find that parents' reading enjoyment, but not their frequent reading in their spare time, to some degree does compensate for lack of tertiary (high) education. However, if increasingly fewer parents like to read, more children will go without the opportunity to develop reading enjoyment themselves, and this will likely affect more children from low-SES backgrounds than from higher SES-backgrounds.