CLPE Reflecting Realities Report 2025 – Summary of This Year’s Findings
Today, the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) releases the 8th annual Reflecting Realities Survey of Ethnic Representation within UK Children’s Literature, bringing some welcome news after last year’s disappointing drop.
The newly published report can be viewed here.
The report, which covers books published in 2024, shows a modest but important increase in representation, with the CLPE urging the publishing industry to maintain this progress consistently as they approach a decade of insight.
Latest Findings – A Steady Rise in Representation
The overall percentage of reviewed children’s books published in 2024 featuring a racially minoritised character has risen from 17% in 2023 to 24% in 2024.
Crucially, the number of racially minoritised main characters has reached the highest reported figure to date: 24% in 2024. This is a significant jump from the dramatic low of 7% reported in 2023.
While this demonstrates a steady increase, it is noted that the overall figure of 24% has not yet returned to the high of 30% reported in 2022.
Representation Across Text Types
The survey looks at fiction, non-fiction and picture books aimed at readers aged 3-11, showing positive movement in the minoritised presence over two areas:
- Fiction saw a positive rise in minoritised presence, increasing from 11% in 2023 to 18% in 2024.
- Non-Fiction also increased year on year, moving from 22% in 2023 to 27% in 2024.
However, it is worth noting again that neither of these gains matches or exceeds the 2022 figures (24% for fiction, 30% for non-fiction).
By contrast, Picture Books have seen an unprecedented drop in minoritised presence this year, falling from 55% in 2023 to 38% in 2024. Despite this drop, picture books continue to have the highest proportion of minoritised presence across the three text types.
The Importance of Maintaining Momentum
Farrah Serroukh, Executive Director of Research and Development at CLPE, expressed relief at the positive figures s while also stressing that work must now be done to implement mechanisms to ensure that an “inclusive lens is applied at every stage” of the publishing process.
Jonathan Douglas CBE, Chief Executive of the National Literacy Trust (CLPE became a subsidiary earlier this year), reinforced the link between representation and literacy:
“Children and young people who see themselves in books are more likely to enjoy reading, read more often and have greater confidence… The National Year of Reading in 2026 provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the important progress we’re seeing in representation across children’s publishing to take root and flourish.”
The figures reported this year make it clear that the work of ensuring all readers can access quality, inclusive and representative literature is far from done, but the increase in minoritised main characters is a very welcome step forward
Recommendations From the Report
The 8th Reflecting Realities report 2025 calls on the publishing industry to remain steadfast in its commitment to consistently producing high-quality quality inclusive, and representative literature as standard practice, especially as we head into 2026 – the National Year of Reading.
In previous years, the published report has offered numerous recommendations or lists of texts. In this year’s report, 38 exemplified texts are named. Many of the texts will be familiar to BooksForTopics users from our Year Group booklists and Diverse and Inclusive booklists – including picture books like My Name is a Gift, Lulu Meets the Bees and Papa’s Butter Chicken, alongside KS2 chapter books like Nush and the Stolen Emerald, Paper Dragons and Bobby Bains Plays a Blinder.
However, the list is absolutely not exhaustive and simply a signpost to exemplary texts, with the principles behind the publishing process and book selection being the important point. In particular, this year the report ends with a call for the industry to double down on its efforts to make the principle of inclusion integral to every stage of the publishing process.
Click here to see the newest Reflecting Realities booklist.
How BooksForTopics Supports Diverse Classrooms
Teachers and librarians are crucial in ensuring the books on our shelves and in our lessons meet the need for high-quality, authentic representation.
BooksForTopics is here to help you bridge the gap between published output and classroom resources. Many of the exemplified texts already appear on our Year Group booklists, and we also have a further host of resources to support schools in diversifying their book collections.
We curate booklists, including our popular Cultural Diversity Booklist, Minority Ethnic Characters Booklist and age-specific Diverse and Inclusive children’s book lists, filtering the best titles by theme, age and curriculum links. This allows you to easily find and select books that feature a breadth of diverse characters and experiences, supporting every child’s engagement with reading.
Beyond Reflecting Realities, we’ve taken a broad view of diversity to include neurodiversity, disability and family structures as well as cultural and ethnic diversity within our lists. Among our Diverse and Inclusive booklists, you’ll also find books that represent hearing loss, neurodiversity, limb difference and all different families. We also host booklists for the Diverse Book Awards (for which our director Alison is a judge) and Inclusive Books for Children.
We have also curated all of the Reflecting Realities exemplified texts into one handy Reflecting Realities booklist for you.
If you want to expand your stock of diverse books for children, browse our diversity hub featuring booklists covering the primary age range or browse through the list of last year’s Reflecting Realities books.
> Browse our Topic Booklists
> Visit the Reflecting Realities Booklist
> Go to our Diversity Booklists
> View our Printable Year Group Booklists.
> See our Books of the Month.