Half of preschool teachers in Spain do not read books to their students regularly. This is one of the conclusions of the latest TALIS Starting Strong report by the OECD, which analyzes the situation in schools regarding early childhood education. This year, for the first time, Spain participated. The study shows that only 55% of preschool teachers—that is, those with students between the ages of 3 and 6—read books to their students regularly. This percentage rises to 85% in the case of Ireland, which is by far the country with the highest rate of this type of classroom activity among the territories analyzed by the OECD. Turkey (69%), Sweden (68%), Chile (67%), and Japan (64%) complete the top of the ranking. Conversely, Morocco and Denmark (42%), Germany (46%), and Finland (48%) are at the bottom. Therefore, regarding the proportion of teachers who read books to their students, Spain is in the middle of the twenty or so countries on which the study focused. "There is a lot of international, but also national, evidence of the benefits of not only reading stories but also working on orality and discourse in early childhood, and even before the age of three," argues Pilar Prieto, ICREA researcher in the Department of Translation and Language Sciences at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF). Hence, Prieto insists on the need for the link between orality and literacy to be systematically addressed in all schools across the country.

In such audiovisual and stressful times, reading has become a singular and almost revolutionary act. It goes against the grain. Reading time is precious, requiring willpower and determination. "Do you have time to read? Gosh! How do you do it?" people ask me. I reply: "Don't you have time to read? Gosh! How do you do it?"

"We need the curriculum to tell teachers how to detect if a student will have reading problems." This warning from school principal Francesc Martín, which may seem obvious, is one of the main obstacles to improving reading comprehension results in Catalonia. This is the conclusion of the study. Reading comprehension: the pending subject, presented this Monday by the Bofill Foundation.