The Australian Education Union and Tasmanian State School Parents and Friends said it was important parents read to their children from a young age to build respect for learning and education.

Recent statistics show about half of Tasmanian adults lack the basic literacy skills to comprehend information from a newspaper or a magazine.

Union president Terry Polglase said that at the age of 10 many pupils started to fall behind and lost interest in their work if they did not have the necessary support in the classroom.

He said it then became hard to keep them in school.

The problem is filtering up the system with college teachers being trained in how to improve the literacy of students.

Mr Polglase said factors that affected a child's literacy level included parent input, attendance and the load on teachers with fewer resources to support them.

Mr Polglase said continued cuts to school budgets could see the problem grow.

Parents and Friends vice-president Jenny Eddington said literacy and numeracy results in schools were a concern but she said there had been improvements.

In the past she said she had worked with children who did not know how to open a book, so it was important that such habits were encouraged in the home and something as basic as seeing parents read a book was a way of demonstrating the importance of learning.

Ms Eddington said the loss of children's librarians from many schools had been a concern because of the specific knowledge they had of encouraging reading.

Education Minister Nick McKim did not respond to questions.