Reading is a huge effort for many people, a bore for others, and, believe it or not, many people prefer watching TV.

Obviously, every child should be given the best possible opportunity to acquire literacy skills.

Parents should be encouraged to read to their children, and teachers should be equipped with all available techniques for teaching literacy, so the varying needs and capacities of individual kids can be taken into account.

A strangely reflective, even melancholy day. Is that because, unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere, Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn.

Universal literacy was a 20th-century goal. Before then, reading and writing were skills largely confined to a small, highly educated class of professional people.

Reading is a huge effort for many people, a bore for others, and, believe it or not, many people prefer watching TV.

Although we love the idea of choice - our culture almost worships it - we seek refuge in the familiar and the comfortable.