Books or TV? Children's preferences surveyed

Watching television has become a less popular pastime with 9-11 year-olds in the last four years. It's still more popular than reading books, but only 55% preferred watching TV to reading in 2007 as opposed to 62% in 2003. Encouragingly, nearly 70% of 9 year-olds and 60% of 11 year-olds said they enjoyed reading stories. For full details, see the survey by the National Foundation for Educational Research or, for a summary, see the coverage in the Independent.