New grammar tests will 'impoverish English teaching'
Plans for new primary school grammar tests in England will hold a "gun to the head" of teachers, experts say.
The National Association for the Teaching of English says a revised focus on spelling, grammar and punctuation will "impoverish" teaching.
Its chairman, Dr Simon Gibbon, says the reforms are based on ministers' "diminishing memories of their own grammar- and public -school educations".
The government says it wants higher standards in English.
But Dr Simon Gibbon, chairman of the association and expert in English education at King's College, London, warns that such an approach will turn pupils off the subject.
In a speech to his association's annual conference in York on Friday, he says teachers have been "presented with a reductive primary curriculum dominated by phonics, spelling, grammar and standard English".
'Throwback to 1950s'
He continues: "We are likely to see a secondary curriculum (if we have one at all beyond an O-Level syllabus) similarly impoverished, but with the addition of a list of set books drawn from the great and the good of the literary canon."
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... (BBC News - 29 June)