PARENTS who say they are too busy to read to their children should let them watch television-but only with the subtitles on, says a literacy expert. Jim Trelease said parents of children over the age of eight should turn off the sound so their child can only understand its favourite programme by reading the text on screen.

In the case of younger children, the sound should be left on so the child can see the words it hears, says Trelease, 65, America's foremost expert on reading aloud. His comments coincide with a report that says 20% of parents of young children do not read to them, claiming they are simply too tired.

While parents acknowledge that a child's literacy skills are vital, they say busy schedules leave them too drained to fit in even a bedtime story.

Mothers still read more often to their children than fathers-44% compared to 16%-while a third of fathers admit to cutting stories short by turning two or three pages at once.

One in five children in England and Wales leaves primary school unable to read properly.

Trelease, who banned almost all week-night television in his house when his two children were teenagers, said no parent could legitimately claim to have no time to read to their child.

Trelease, the author of the best-selling Read-Aloud Handbook, said that by the time a child from a professional family arrived at school, he or she would have heard 45 million words, the working-class child, 26 million and the child on welfare, only 13 million-”thirty-two million fewer words than the kids of well-educated parents have heard”.

He said some parents had a better idea of what needed to be done for their child to achieve his or her best and this usually meant less television.

“If you have a reluctant reader of eight who loves TV, I would say 'Fine, you can watch TV but no sound.”

“Finland has the highest reading scores of any children because it imports a lot of English language programmes and they are subtitled.

“To the mother who says 'My kid is only three so she cannotread', Isay ' Can she read the word McDonalds?' She says 'Of course, she has seen it so many times'. “I say 'that's my point'. It is all about word recognition.'

The report, based on a survey of 1,000 parents by tickbox,net, shows that one in 10 parents of primary schoolchildren never reads to them.

The average time parents spend reading to children is 10 to 15 minutes, which pales in comparison to the one hour and 29 minutes that the average child spends watching television- Telegraph Group Ltd, London.