Victorian children and young people are preparing to take on the challenge to read more books as the Premiers’ Reading Challenge gets underway.

Minister for Education James Merlino today launched the Premiers’ Reading Challenge 2020, with thousands of avid readers expected to take part in schools, early childhood centres and homes across the state.

Now in its 16^th year, the Premiers’ Reading Challenge continues to inspire more children to read, helping to build essential literacy skills that support their education.

The theme of this year’s Premiers’ Reading Challenge is ‘Reading: Everybody. Everyday.’

The 2020 artwork has been designed by Jess McGeachin, whose debut picture book ‘Fly’, published in 2019, was shortlisted for the World Illustration awards.

Students in Years 3-10 need to read at least 15 books in the six months from March to September to complete the challenge. For prep-Year 2 students, the challenge is to read or experience 30 books.

More than 12,000 books feature on the list – 150 of them new. Children can read picture books, short stories, poems or non-fiction books in any language as part of the challenge.

Children who have not yet started school are challenged to read or experience 40 books with the help of their families as part of the Premiers’ Reading Challenge for the Early Years.

A key Education State target is increasing the number of Year 5 and Year 9 students reaching the highest levels of achievement in reading by 25 per cent – the Challenge is an important initiative in striving to meet this target.

Last year 113,000 students and children from 956 local schools, 1,367 early childhood services and homes across the state completed the Challenge and got lost in the pages of more than 4.3 million books.

Since the challenge began in 2005, more than 3 million students in Victoria have read nearly 50 million books.

For more information, visit education.vic.gov.au/prc.