One in ten young people encounter reading difficulties in France, warns a study

Worrying figures. More than one in ten young people “reading difficulty” in France, reveals on Tuesday June 6 a study by the Ministry of National Education, which is based on tests carried out with the 750,000 participants in the Defense and Citizenship Day in 2022.

The survey also reveals that, among these young people in difficulty, half are in a situation of illiteracy. Of the 750,000 young people of French nationality, aged 16 to 25, 11.2% “are struggling with reading”, details a note from Depp, a statistics agency of the Ministry of Education. Young people “illiterate” characterize themselves “by very poor or even non-existent reading comprehension”. Those who encounter the most severe difficulties and who represent 4.9% of the whole are characterized by a “significant vocabulary deficit”.

Boys more in difficulty than girls

Then there are 10% of young people “with limited achievements”Who “manage to compensate for their difficulties to reach a certain level of understanding”. Reading “remains, for them, a laborious activity, but which they know how to implement in order to profit from it”. In total, 78.9% of young people who took part in the JDC in 2022, a compulsory day, are nevertheless considered to be “effective readers”.

The survey, conducted every year since 2009, highlights a difference between boys and girls: 12.9% of boys are in difficulty, against 9.1% of girls. The frequency of reading difficulties is more pronounced in the departments of the North (15.7% of young people with reading difficulties in Aisne, 13.2% in Somme), Nièvre, Yonne and overseas . But also in Ile-de-France, where the share of these young people with reading difficulties varies from 6% in Paris to 15.5% in Seine-Saint-Denis.