Schools scrapping classic poetry for 'lightweight' verse

Only very few primary schools are tackling works such as Wordworth's Daffodils or Coleridge's the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Too many primary teachers do not know enough about poetry to cover the subject properly and concentrate instead on a narrow range of easier works, often by modern writers.

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Ofsted inspectors also warned that a culture of coaching pupils for tests in the three Rs was squeezing the time available for the study of poetry.

Across primary and secondary schools, too much poetry teaching was "dull" and unchallenging, they said.

Inspectors who checked poetry teaching at 86 primary and secondary schools concluded it was the worst-taught aspect of English.

One in three schools were merely "satisfactory" while only seven were rated "outstanding".

At primary level, many teachers had not been trained well enough to cover poetry with their classes.

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Rather than giving detailed feedback on pupils' own attempts at poetry, they tended to make comments such as "super" or "lovely poem".

In a report published today, inspectors also urged teachers to allow children to study a wider range of poems both from classic authors and other cultures.

"Many teachers, especially in the primary schools, did not know enough about poetry," the inspectors said.

"This sometimes led to poor quality marking and a uniformity in practice, where the same few poems were studied across most schools.

"Although these poems were mostly worth studying, many of them were relatively lightweight and pupils had only limited experience of classic poems and poems from other cultures and traditions."

In primary schools, the most commonly taught poems included Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, Spike Milligan's On the Ning, Nang, Nong, and The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes.

William Blake's Tyger was the most popular classic poem taught in primary schools, it said.

But only a "very small minority of schools used poems such as Daffodils, The Ancient Mariner and The Pied Piper of Hamelin".

Children's experience of poetry also suffered through the "emphasis over recent years on raising standards of basic literacy" and national tests, the report said.

Teachers who set boring class work - such as asking pupils to count the lines or list the rhymes in a poem - make poetry "a chore rather than a pleasure".

And poetry hardly featured in English lessons for 14-year-olds since they were being prepared to test national tests.

By contrast, the inspectors warned that the "sheer volume" of poetry pupils are expected to study in the following two years for their GCSEs can lead to "dull and repetitive teaching".

The report, Poetry in Schools, said: "Despite the outstanding results in GCSE English literature, provision for poetry is satisfactory rather than good because of the focus on teaching to the tests and examinations.

"This focus has meant a sacrifice of real enjoyment and of writing poetry creatively."

Secondary school poetry education did not provide a "coherent" preparation for studying English at A-level, the report added.

Schools Minister Lord Adonis said: "We want to do more to engender a love of poetry in children from primary school to GCSE and beyond.

"I want to see a generation of young people who know their poetry from Auden to Zephaniah and their sonnets from sestinas."