+44 (0) 1273 386849Literacy as a Future Skill: What Schools, Employers, and Libraries Need to Know
Teachers, parents, carers, educators, and future employers all want children and young people to be prepared for the future. Conversations about preparation usually focus on technology: artificial intelligence, coding, automation, and digital skills. Yet the ability that underpins every one of these conversations is often overlooked.
Literacy.
This article explores what recent research tells us about literacy as a future skill today – from declining reading engagement to the skills employers now expect in an AI-influenced workplace – and why school and community libraries play such an important role in strengthening literacy for the future.
The Current Literacy Picture
Recent research from the National Literacy Trust offers one of the clearest snapshots of the literacy situation.
Their survey of more than 114,000 children and young people aged 5–18 found that reading enjoyment has reached its lowest recorded level in two decades. Only 32.7% of young people say they enjoy reading in their free time, and just 18.7% report reading daily outside school.
These figures matter because reading enjoyment strongly correlates with educational outcomes. This is so important, in 2025, MPs launched a parliamentary inquiry into Reading for Pleasure, exploring how schools, libraries, and communities can sustain a culture of voluntary reading among young people. The inquiry recognises that enjoyment is central to literacy development and aims to examine how reading habits can be strengthened nationally.
The fact that Parliament is investigating reading culture highlights how seriously literacy organisations view the current decline in reading engagement. Decades of research show that reading for pleasure predicts academic attainment, vocabulary growth, and long-term learning success.
At the same time, the National Literacy Trust has also warned about a growing skills gap in the young workforce. In simple terms, the demands of literacy are increasing while engagement with reading – and with listening and speaking – is decreasing.
Literacy as a Future Skill for the Future Workforce
The relationship between literacy and future employment is becoming clearer every year.
Workplace analysts increasingly identify communication, critical thinking, and information evaluation as essential workforce skills. A review of education and workforce trends highlights that employers increasingly expect workers to interpret information, synthesise ideas, and communicate across digital platforms.
As Andrea Hill in Forbes recently noted,
The first place educational failure shows up is not at the most advanced skill levels, but at the point where basic work readiness begins. When large numbers of young adults enter the workforce without strong literacy, numeracy, self-regulation, or basic problem-solving skills, even entry-level roles become harder to staff and harder to stabilize.
Without literacy, business will lack the pool of suitable talent. Research from the National Literacy Trust adds another layer to this discussion. Conversations with employers across multiple sectors suggest that the literacy skills needed for modern workplaces now include:
- Writing clearly enough to formulate and refine AI prompts
- Analysing and evaluating AI-generated outputs
- Presenting arguments and recommendations clearly and concisely
- Listening carefully to complex information and nuanced viewpoints
- Using literacy to support creativity, idea generation, and problem-solving
In other words, literacy is not only about reading and comprehension. It shapes how people live, businesses flourish, and economies work – no pressure at all!
Literacy Begins Before Formal Reading
Employers emphasise something that libraries have long understood. Reading and writing for pleasure build the curiosity and motivation associated with lifelong learning. Literacy development starts with language and communication, not formal reading instruction. Early years educators emphasise the importance of children being able to:
- Express needs
- Describe feelings
- Ask questions
- Follow conversations
These communication skills underpin reading comprehension and classroom learning.
Recent government policy discussions have reinforced this point. The UK government’s policy framework Every Child Achieving and Thriving highlights the importance of early language development as a foundation for later learning and wellbeing.
At the same time, literacy advocates have raised concerns about a growing expectation gap between parents and teachers when it comes to school readiness. Many parents understandably focus on practical preparation for school, while teachers often identify communication and language skills as the most critical indicators of readiness.
The National Literacy Trust discusses these issues in its policy response to the Schools White Paper. Strong language foundations make literacy development far more likely to succeed once children enter formal schooling.
Where Libraries Fit Into This Conversation
All of these developments – declining reading engagement, rising literacy expectations in the workplace, and the growing complexity of the digital information environment – place libraries in a particularly important position.
School and community libraries sit at the intersection of several strands of literacy that are increasingly recognised as essential for young people:
- reading for pleasure
- information literacy
- digital literacy
- access to diverse stories and perspectives
Each of these areas is frequently discussed in education policy, workforce reports, and literacy research. Libraries are one of the few spaces where they naturally come together.
Research consistently shows that access to books, book campaigns, positive reading experiences, and supportive reading environments influence whether young people develop lasting reading habits. When children can explore books freely, discover genres that interest them, and encounter reading as something enjoyable rather than purely instructional, they are more likely to continue reading as they grow older.
Libraries play a practical role in making this possible.
They introduce students to formats that reflect contemporary reading culture – from graphic novels to audiobooks. Libraries create opportunities for curiosity-driven reading beyond the curriculum. Finally, libraries support students as they navigate increasingly complex information environments, helping them question sources, compare perspectives, and understand how information is produced.
In this sense, libraries are not simply places where books are stored. They are places where literacy is practised, experienced, and developed across multiple forms.
A Final Word on Literacy as a Future Skill
The challenge, then, may be less about what libraries do and more about how literacy itself is discussed.
Too often literacy appears in policy debates as a deficit – something to fix when test scores fall, or something to remediate when students struggle. Yet the research tells a much broader story.
Literacy supports a wide range of outcomes that extend far beyond reading ability alone. Strong literacy skills are closely connected with:
- academic achievement across subjects
- effective communication and collaboration
- critical thinking and evidence evaluation
- workforce readiness
- social mobility and participation in everyday life
As technology reshapes how people learn, work, and communicate, these abilities become more valuable, not less. Artificial intelligence can generate information quickly. Human beings still need to interpret it, question it, connect ideas, and communicate meaningfully with others.
Those abilities begin with literacy as a future skill. Which means literacy should no longer be framed simply as an early schooling concern or a narrow academic skill. It is the foundation that enables learning, innovation, and participation in modern society.
And if we want to prepare young people for the future, literacy deserves to be recognised for what it already is one of the most important future skills we have.
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