An international footballer has joined forces with one of the UK’s main education platforms to launch a brand-new nationwide initiative. Levi Colwill who has played for both Chelsea and England aims to reverse the decline in children’s reading engagement by teaming up with StoryZoo to launch a brand-new scheme which will look at increasing the rate at which children gain the valuable skills they need to read.

The UK-based EdTech platform designed to help primary-aged children develop a love of reading through accessible, engaging digital books.

The platform is used by schools to support reading for pleasure, home learning and classroom engagement, with built-in tools designed to make reading more interactive and rewarding for children.

Media availability

Following the ITV broadcast, Levi Colwill and representatives from StoryZoo are available for further interviews with national and regional media, subject to football training and match commitments.

Daily reading rates among UK children aged 5–8 dropped to 44.5% in 2025, with only 1 in 3 children (32.7%) aged 8–18 reporting that they enjoy reading, the lowest level since 2005. Daily reading among all children and young people has halved in two decades. Gender gaps are widening, with more girls (56.9%) than boys (48.2%) in the 5-8 age group reading daily.

Key Findings on Early Years Reading (2025–2026):

Daily Habits: Only 44.5% of children aged 5-8 read daily in 2025, a 3.4 percentage point drop from 2024 and a 9.1 percentage point drop since 2019.

Declining Enjoyment: Only 32.7% of children aged 8-18 enjoy reading, marking a 36% decrease since 2005.

Gender Gap: Over 1 in 5 (22%) boys aged 0-2 are rarely or never read to, compared to 15% of girls.

Access to Books: In 2024, 1 in 8 (13.3%) children aged 5–18 did not have a book of their own at home.

Impact of Reading: Reading for pleasure has four times more impact on a child’s progress by age 16 than parental education or socioeconomic status.

Disadvantage Gap: Children from low-income households (receiving free school meals) are less likely to read daily (15.8%) than their peers (19.4%).

Reading to Children: Only 40% of parents feel that reading to their children is “fun” for them.

The campaign which has already gathered much national attention has featured on ITV Meridian and ITV News on 6 March, highlighting the urgent need to encourage more children across the UK to read for pleasure.

The campaign includes giving every primary school in England free access to a full year of StoryZoo’s digital reading platform which includes a thousand age-appropriate e-books. They just simply need to register using a school e-mail address.

The initiative aims to make reading more accessible, enjoyable and consistent for young children, while supporting teachers and families at a time when reading engagement among children is at its lowest level in decades.

Levi Colwill launches the initiative at his local school

To mark the launch, Levi visited St Mary’s School in Southampton, a school local to him and attended by members of his family. As part of the visit, he met pupils and led an assembly to help children across the country rediscover the joy of reading.

St Mary’s school will be given free long-term access to the system with the wider, national roll out now available to all other schools.

Levi decided to support the campaign due to his belief that education and literacy create opportunity. He understood how slim the odds were of becoming a professional footballer so decided that education should always be a priority.

By taking part in the campaign he hopes to remove barriers to reading and enable children to gain more confidence from an early age through the stories they read.

Why this matters

Reading engagement among children in the UK has reached its lowest level on record:

• Only 1 in 5 children now read daily

• Fewer than one third of children say they enjoy reading

• 40% of adults have not read a book in the past year

• Reading to young children has fallen sharply over the past decade

• Children who enjoy reading consistently achieve stronger literacy outcomes

If you’d like more information on StoryZoo, please visit https://www.youtube.com/c/storyzoo/playlists