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.
Michael Rosen, the former Children's Laureate, said, 'The idea that children can't manage whole stories or whole books is nonsense. No extract in the world has the power of books. Extracts deny children the meat of the story.'
Mr Rosen, a campaigner for Literacy Evolve, a new programme being launched this autumn to help KS2 teachers return to whole-book reading in British schools, added, 'There are going to be children who will only be taught about three or four books as part of their literacy education in the whole of their primary school careers.
'For the thousands of children who don't read books at home, it is a travesty. That's three books they might have come across in the whole of their infant lives. I think it will shock the public that so few whole books are being taught in class.'
