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It is now widely recognised that standards of literacy are very poor in the UK, both in adults and children. Attention is being given to ensuring that student teachers are taught how to teach reading, and the Literacy Task Force has also put forward plans for a programme of literacy summer schools. There is now widespread agreement on the best way to teach children to read, and this is reflected in the National Literacy Project, which was launched in Jan 1997 in almost 300 primary schools around the UK.

There is growing concern in the UK that adults have very low expectations of children in relation to reading. It is common for literacy and literature to be confused, with adults assuming that merely having basic literacy skills is the same as reading. There is strong emphasis on children's reading levels, and this seems to impose an invisible barrier on what they can achieve. Furthermore, the literacy hour only permits children to read short extracts, with no expectation that they should read the whole book from which the extract is taken.

There is currently a fierce debate in the UK on the standards of literacy in schools, with many reports that children are leaving primary school at the age of 11 without reading, writing and counting skills. Reading skills of seven year olds in 1991 were around three months behind those of seven year olds in 1987 according to a reading test carried out by the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER) but an independent researcher found that reading standards among primary children in Suffolk had fallen by by four times this figure between 1980 and 1990, a claim disputed by the NFER.