[Extended] Why Reading for 10 Minutes a Day Could Transform Your Child’s GCSE English Result

Here’s something I don’t often admit out loud: despite being an English teacher for over 10 years, up to a few years ago, I didn’t do any casual reading.

I know, I know - how awful!

But that experience, of not doing any casual reading for a large chunk of my life - and then falling back in love with it, has actually helped me connect with teens and get them reading. And this summer holiday could, hopefully with a little help from this article, get your child on the pathway to exploring their imagination. Not through a screen. But through words on a page.

Joy!

Let’s get a suitably sobering statistic out of the way:

25% of 15-year-olds have a reading age of 12.

I’m just going to let that sit there for a moment.

If you feel like your child isn’t reading enough, you’re not alone - it’s one of the most talked about topics and concerns I discuss with parents each year. With only 1 in 3 young people saying they enjoy reading something in their free time, it’s no wonder it’s such a prevalent worry across the country. That said, I’m sure you’re aware of 2026 being designated the National Year of Reading. No? Me neither…

Perhaps we may look towards the UK Government’s Social Media ban for under 16s as the elixir - the holy grail - to solve our problems. Well, let’s not get carried away. Australia’s eSafety Commission found that three months after the ban came into force, 70% of children still had active social media accounts. And, let’s face it, it’s wishful thinking to assume that removing one giant time sink will automatically compel them to the dusty coves of the bookshelves.

The mountain ahead of us, I fear, is formidable.

The truth is, reading has never been viewed as so dated, so stuffy, so… ‘mid’ as it is right now. On top of this, children appear hard-pressed to find the time to enjoy this hobby. This is backed up by the National Literacy Trust who had over 80,000 children aged 11-16 respond to questions about attitudes toward reading with one student saying that they have: “no time, and even if I do then I don’t have the energy nor motivation to read when other options are more convenient and actively engaging.”

As a teacher, I see the impacts of this daily. I often work with students who are really struggling - really stuck in the doldrums. I’m talking grades 1s and 2s in English. Teachers at school, by the time the students hit year 11, are spending a lot of time revising content and trying to teach kids how to answer questions, ignoring the reason that these children are struggling is because they find it extraordinarily hard to read the extracts they have in front of them. If you cannot fathom the point of the sentences before you, how on earth can you be expected to write about it correctly?

I’ve noticed that students who start work with me already casually reading get higher results in their GCSE English. A GL Assessment study of over 370,000 secondary school students found a significant correlation between reading ability and GCSE English Language results. What that correlation means in practice is this.

All exam boards are required to test the reading and inference skills of students. That means that everyone is given multiple extracts, of around 30-50 lines, and is expected to be able to infer ideas, understand perspectives and find literary techniques. This is the area I see students struggle with the most if they aren’t already reading. Students are given multiple questions on these extracts and what’s heartbreaking to see is that they cannot answer these questions because they cannot actually understand the extracts. I mean that. I sit with students and watch them stare at the page of words, hoping to find something that they can latch onto, but it’s all just too overwhelming. Too alien.

This is their mountain. And they aren’t able to get past base camp.

So, having recognised the importance of reading, we need to establish how we can actually get our youth to integrate this into their lives. I’ve had success in motivating students to read a little bit more by laying out some pretty stark and simple numbers for them. Numbers that actually mean something to them.

I say to pupils - if you read just one chapter, or say 10 minutes of a book, that is about 100-200 lines of text. That’s the equivalent of ALL the reading they would have to do on exam day of their English language GCSEs. The benefits of that for a student are immeasurable. They are training themselves, through exposure, to understand ways in which writers communicate story and description - the key parts of analysis the examiner wants to see. When I lay this out for students I often genuinely see a lightbulb moment go off for them, followed up by the frustratingly annoying teen phrase: “Actually?” They are responding to the notion that 10 minutes seems achievable and fairly innocuous to their daily lives, and the direct benefit is framed palpably.

“But my child simply doesn’t find anything they want to read about!”

Totally valid concern here, and in an age where there has never been so much choice of media to consume, it is very understandable. But I want to take you back to the young person’s quote I shared earlier. They added: “When I find a book I love I demolish it within days though, 300 pages a day.” So, what we need to get better at is finding a book they love. Shouldn’t be too hard - right? After all, there is a plethora of teen books available to be read.

Here’s how I get around this, a method I’d like to share with you. And, short of losing all patience and shoving a book in front of their faces (doesn’t work), I ask a few simple questions - and I make sure they answer them - none of this ‘I don’t know!’:

1. What are your interests or hobbies?

2. What kind of films, tv shows or games do you like watching and playing

From this I can generally gather what genre they might be most interested in and what themes and ideas might pique their interest and from there you start the search! I'll let you in on a secret here… I use AI to find the right book for them. I feed their answers into the AI model (I use Claude) and ask for three recommendations tailored to their interests. Then I read up separately on each suggestion and check human reviews on Goodreads and Amazon to determine which fits best. And if I'm being completely honest, I do exactly the same for myself. Across a year my own tastes change, so I start a fresh conversation each time I'm hunting for my next read too.

Here’s what it looks like with an actual student of mine who I discovered had a keen interest in all things horses. Upon asking the AI of choice, we get our three recommendations and go about selecting the best option. I first looked at the year of publication and found one of the suggestions was a book published in 1935. I’m torn by this selection because both Claude and ChatGPT selected it in our teen horse category, but I worry about the engagement factor on a book this old - so I cross it off my list. I’m now left with two and I note that one of them (The Heartland book series) has been made into a TV series. That interests me because it can be a potential companion watch-along while reading. The reviews from Amazon and Goodreads were equally positive across both remaining candidates so it is the addition of the TV series that swings it. And there we have it! A book selected, a teen feeling invested in the process - like this book is for them, and we are off to the races! You’re wondering… “Did she like the book?”. Yes, dear reader, she loved it!

Ok, so you’ve put some faith into this process, done the exercise, you’ve got the book on order - but they’re never going to read it, right?

Just like any habit, it takes a while to get bedded in. 66 days is the reported science on building a habit so it’s a couple of months of commitment, but I do find that with the right book, aimed at the right age range, and targeting the right interests, we can achieve that.

However, we need to create the right environment for reading. Research backs up that reading doesn’t tend to decline because teens don’t like reading, but because routines have weakened over time and demands on their time have increased. What teenagers need is quality space and time to foster an environment that encourages quiet reading. I’m becoming quite heartened by discussions I have with year 11s and 13s around exam time who are realising that the only effective revision can come from taking away distractions - like a phone. There’s an increasing number of children who have the self-control to do this autonomously, but there will be those who can’t. For those, I suggest not making the 10 minutes of reading time just before they sleep - because they will have access to their phone (if they are allowed it overnight). So finding a time where it would be acceptable to hand over the device, for that short reading time, might work better.

For students of mine who find this really difficult, who find the very idea of sitting down and reading a book frankly ‘long’, I get them to create a reward system. And this actually works. I get them to lay out all their favourite things: the chocolate, the games console, the phone and we put treats on the line. For example, complete your 10 minutes of reading, get your one hour on the PlayStation. This triggers the dopamine reward hit in them that makes the reward feel even more meaningful - and it came from that discipline to do something they may not want to do for a short while. The hope is that our excellent book selection takes over this process over the next few months and we’ve got a teen not having to fight against it.

If the task feels totally insurmountable, just remember saying to a teen - “I’m only looking for a 10 minute a day commitment” and this normally gets them on board with just a couple of months of this to start with. And once they can appreciate how it could help them, they are almost always willing to give it a go.

Here is the reality of the benefit to them in (hopefully) simple numbers. If you add up 10 minutes a day through year 11, that’s 50 hours of reading. That comes to about 60,000 lines of text read. The equivalent of 1,200 GCSE English exam extracts. That’s probably why you can see that those who read - even a little - get better GCSE English results. They’ve got such a head start over the others, struggling their way through the reading section of the papers.

This summer, if we can start 10 minutes a day of reading with your reluctant teen through July, over the next 66 days the habit forms and, come September, we’ve got a reader. We’ve helped them understand these distinct benefits they’ll find, activated a reward motivation system, got them invested in choosing the right book for them, and encouraged them every step of the way. We've focused on the benefits for them. But don't underestimate the reward for you too. Watching a teenager who once stared blankly at their phone choose to pick up a book instead, knowing what that habit is quietly doing for their future, is its own reward. And it started with ten minutes.

The social media ban comes into force in 2027. This summer is the moment to get ahead of it. Ten minutes a day. The right book. A habit formed before September. For those with teenagers young enough to be affected, that's not just a head start on their GCSEs, it may be the best thing you do for them this summer.

Glossary

Mid — teen slang for mediocre or uninspiring.

Long — teen slang for something that feels tedious or laborious.

If this has resonated and you’d like to find out more about my GCSE English tuition, or are looking for a GCSE English tutor, you can get in touch with me directly here.

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