ABSTRACT
At all ages except 12+ in the Senior School at least four out of five girls read the news. 'The news' includes everything except the sport and the children's column, so that this does not reveal at all precisely what these girls do read. In the Secondary Schools the proportion reading the sports columns steadily increases until at 15+ it is three-quarters the size of this proportion amongst boys. In the Senior Schools attention to this part of the newspaper remains fairly constant at a much lower level. But above all the newspapers report men's sports much more fully, and this is largely because men's sports are professionalized and commercialized much more than women's. The mixed nature of this newspaper reading shows once again how people, and particularly younger adolescents, read at very diverse levels of seriousness and maturity, without being at all upset by this 'inconsistency'.
