Gove wants primary pupils to learn poetry and a language

Education Secretary Michael Gove will promise a new focus on traditional virtues of spelling and grammar when he sets out plans for the teaching of English.

Mr Gove will also put forward proposals to make learning a foreign language compulsory for pupils from the age of seven.

Under his plans, primary schools could offer lessons in Mandarin, Latin and Greek as well as French, German and Spanish from September 2014.

The Education Secretary is said to be determined to make the teaching of English at primary school “far more rigorous” than it is at present. The plans will go out to a formal consultation later in the year.

The aim is to ensure that pupils leave primary school with a strong command of both written and spoken English, with high standards of literacy.

The plans call for a systematic approach to the teaching of phonics as a basis for teaching children to become fluent readers and good spellers.

From Year 1, at the age of five, pupils will be read poems by their teacher as well as starting to learn simple poems by heart and practise recitals.

The programme of study for Year 2 will state that pupils should continue “to build up a repertoire of poems learnt by heart and recite some of these, with appropriate intonation to make the meaning clear”.

More generally the curriculum will place a much stronger emphasis on reading for pleasure with children from Year 1 “becoming very familiar with key stories, fairy stories and traditional tales”.