The study found that a quarter of primary school children in the UK read just one book a year in class and the equivalent of 600,000 children never read a book in class with their teacher.
More than 500 primary teaching staff working in 500 schools in the UK were surveyed, along with 1,000 parents of school-age children.
Of the teachers surveyed, 12 per cent said they have never read a complete book with their class.
The study found that rather than reading whole books to children, teachers are becoming increasingly dependent on bite-sized text extracts for literacy sessions.
Three-quarters of teachers surveyed said this was causing damage to children's reading stamina and concentration levels and two-thirds feared the absence of using whole books in class would turn children off reading. One in five said that they had already seen evidence of this happening.
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