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'Vigorous' English teaching on cards

11.06.12 | Bookseller Staff

Learning poetry and literature will be made compulsory for children as young as five under new plans education secretary Michael Gove is expected to unveil later this week.

Spelling and grammar will get a new focus and the teaching of English will become “far more vigorous”, as pupils in Year One will be read poems by their teacher, and will learn to recite certain works.

The plans will also lead to children “becoming very familiar with key stories, fairy stories and traditional tales”, according to the Independent.

By Year Two, children will “build up a repertoire of poems learnt by heart and recite some of these, with appropriate intonation to make the meaning clear”, the newspaper said.

Other plans announced later this week are expected to concern compulsory teaching of a foreign language for children from the age of seven, with lessons in Mandarin, Latin, Greek, Spanish, French and German.

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