Secondary school children are not reading enough, it has been suggested.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, education secretary Michael Gove said pupils should be required to read a wide range of books, rather than one or two as part of their GCSE studies.
"Recently, I asked to see what students were reading at GCSE and I discovered that something like 80 or 90 per cent were just reading one or two novels and overwhelmingly it was the case that it included Of Mice and Men," he commented.
"As a nation, be saying that our children should be reading 50 books a year, not just one or two for GCSE."
Some of the authors Mr Gove would like to see included on a recommended reading list for secondary school pupils include CS Lewis, Philip Pullman, Rosemary Sutcliff and Alan Garner.
Mr Gove earlier this year announced plans to overhaul the "substandard" national curriculum and replace it with one based on the best school systems in the world.
A national curriculum review is currently being carried out by the Department for Education and supported by a panel of experts.
Posted by Dolcie Thacker
Related News
Register for day to day, long-term and permanent teaching jobs.
