Record-Low Reading Interest, Even as Book-Loving Students Achieve Higher Scores; Number of Books at Home Also Factor

The Yomiuri Shimbun

1:00 JST, August 2, 2025

Students who enjoy reading tend to score better on tests and their performance rises with the number of books they have at home, according to analysis by the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry released on Thursday.

Many students were also found to struggle with constructed-response questions, which ask them to present evidence and organize their ideas in writing.

The ministry combined questionnaire responses with results from the national assessment of academic ability for sixth grade elementary school students and third year junior high school students conducted in fiscal 2025.

Pupils who in the questionnaire section answered “I like reading” outperformed their peers in all six tested subjects — elementary- and junior high-level Japanese; arithmetic or mathematics; and science. For example, the overall average correct-answer rate in elementary Japanese was 67.0%. That rate rose to 73.6% for children who like reading, while it fell to 56.2% for those who do not like reading, creating a gap of roughly 17 percentage points.

The share of sixth graders who said they like reading declined to 36.6%, a drop of 5.5 points from fiscal 2024. Among third year junior high school students, the figure fell 7.6 points to 30.4%. Both percentages are the lowest since the survey began.

Achievement also improved in step with the number of books the students have at their homes. In elementary Japanese, a test with 14 questions, students with 0–25 books at home answered an average of 8.5 questions correctly, those with 26–100 books averaged 9.7 correct answers, and those with 101 or more books averaged 10.2.

“Reading forms the foundation that supports language activities in every subject, so it is essential to help children feel close to books,” a ministry official said.

Detailed item analysis for junior high-level Japanese pointed out that many students “have difficulty writing sentences that clearly convey their own ideas while presenting supporting evidence.”

The ministry will release the survey results in three installments this fiscal year. The first, on July 14, provided average correct answer rates by subject. The release announced on Thursday is the second. Average scores of prefectures and cities designated by government ordinance are expected to be published around autumn.