A brand new document on writing in primary schools, and they didn't ask writers to help them! Lols

 This is how the new government Writing Framework ends:

Acknowledgements This guidance would not have been possible without the support and input of many people. 11 We would particularly like to thank our sector panel, who voluntarily offered their time and knowledge, led by Dr. Tim Mills, MBE, Executive Director of Primary, STEP Academy Trust, with support from Dame Ruth Miskin, Founder of Read Write Inc.; Andrew Percival, Deputy Headteacher, Stanley Road Primary School; Ms. Clare Sealy, OBE, Head of Education Improvement, Education Office, States of Guernsey; Joanne Siddall, former Strategic Lead, Burley Woodhead English Hub; Sonia Thompson, Headteacher/Director, St. Matthew's C.E. Primary Research and Support School; Alex Quigley, Head of Content and Engagement, Education Endowment Foundation; and with input from Ofsted. We would also like to thank the wider group of academics and education professionals who took the time to talk to us or review the draft: Dr Elaine Allen, OBE, Blackpool Literacy Lead; Naomi Ashman, Director of Learning Success, The Bluecoat School, Birmingham; Dr Francesca Bonafede, Research and Evaluation Manager, Writing for Pleasure, National Literacy Trust; Dr Ellen Bristow, National Literacy Trust; Daisy Christodoulou, Director of Education, No More Marking; Jane Considine, Education Consultant, Jane Considine Education; Ian Considine, Education Consultant, Jane Considine Education; Janey Cooksley, Headteacher of Briar Hill Primary School and Regional Director, David Ross Education Trust; Teresa Cremin, Professor of Education (Literacy), The Open University; Catharine Driver - Secondary School Adviser, School Improvement; Andrew Ettinger, Director of Education, National Literacy Trust; Pie Corbett, Talk for Writing; Felicity Ferguson, The Writing For Pleasure Centre; Chris Fountain, English Subject Lead, Oak National Academy; Simon Rose, DCEO, David Ross Education Trust; Sarah Green, Trust Director of Literacy at Prospere Learning Trust and independent consultant, The Literacy Coach; Martin Galway, Head of Professional Learning and Partnerships, National Literacy Trust; Amy Gaunt, Director of Learning, Impact and Influence, Voice 21; Steve Graham, Regents and Warner Professor, Arizona State University; Dr Julian Grenier, Education Endowment Foundation; Jean Gross CBE, Independent Consultant; Judith C. Hochman, Ed. D. Founder, The Writing Revolution; Christine Jackson, Australian Education Research Organisation; Emma Jones, SENCO and SEND Consultant; Debra Myhill, Professor Emerita in Language and Literacy Education, University of Exeter; Tim Oates CBE, Fellow, Churchill College Cambridge; Dr Sally Payne, Professional Adviser, Royal College of Occupational Therapists; Louisa Reeves, Director of Policy and Evidence, Speech and Language UK; Madeleine Roberts, Network Lead for Primary English, Ark Schools; Christopher Robertson, Independent Academic, Policy Analyst and Adviser to Educational Organisations, Co-ordinator for the SENCo-Forum (national e-community), Visiting Professor (inclusion, special educational needs and disability, University of Derby); Joan Sedita, Founder, Keys to Literacy; Sarah Scott, Head of Literacy, Ambition Institute; Dr Daniel Stavrou, Assistant Director, Council for Disabled Children; Julia Strong, on behalf of Talk for Writing; Sue Smits, Director, Morrells Handwriting; Mark Stewart, Director, Left n Write; Nisha Tank, Head of School Improvement, National Literacy Trust; Natalie Wexler, Education Writer and Co-author of The Writing Revolution; Shareen Wilkinson, Executive Director of Education, LEO Academy Trust; Liz Williams - Project Manager, School Improvement and Ross Young, Literacy Lab, University of Edinburgh, The Writing For Pleasure Centre. 12 Special thanks also go to all the English Hubs and the English Hubs Council, who have contributed to the development of the document. We are most grateful for the thoughtful suggestions and steers we have received. There was a lot of agreement about the main messages and the final document brings together the thinking on those; there was less consensus in some other areas. We have listened to the advice, taken account of evidence and carefully considered the approach we should take, but we recognise that not everyone will agree with all our decisions. We have also been sent much useful material. We have read and considered this and, in some cases, have included it in the document. The amount of detail and explanation in the framework has to be balanced against its length, and we have not been able to include every contribution. We appreciate the input to and enthusiasm for the project from reviewers and hope that we may be able to draw again on their expertise when this is updated.

I have looked through this list but so far I haven't been able to find a single person on the list who I would describe as 'a writer'. I've no doubt that they all write. I suspect - but don't know - that they can all write reports and documents, which is one (and only one) kind of writing. Indeed, the whole document leans heavily on this one kind of writing: standard English continuous prose. 

Both in the history of writing and in the contemporary spread of writing, you'll find that standard English continuous prose is only one small part of writing. As I've pointed out in a previous blog, this report ignores the other two pillars of what traditionally were regarded as part of 'English' - namely plays and poems. In fact, this document not only ignores them, it also doesn't explain why it ignores them. (Yes, if you 'search' 'poetry', 'poems', 'drama' etc you'll find one or two passing mentions. What I mean is that there is no consideration of them as 'writing'.)

I suggest that there are several reasons for this and one of them is on account of the composition of these panels.  These are predominantly people who 'know about' writing (allegedly) but don't actually do creative writing in any kind of published and successful way. They are not practitioners. In other words, they exemplify the Gove model of education: 'knowledge before competence'. 

So let's ask, why might it be important for a brand new document on Writing in primary schools to include the thoughts of writers for children - or indeed writers for anybody? Because we know about writing. We know what it takes to write stories, plays and poems. We know what it's like to look for ideas, to find ideas, to get stuck, to edit, to change what we write. 

But more than that: many writers for children spend many, many hours doing writing workshops with children. These are usually not constrained and contained by the absurd, box-ticking, unnecessary knowledge-first nonsense that the Gove revolution has loaded 'writing' with. We go in with ideas, feelings, thoughts and actual examples of how and why we wrote something that interests the children. We go in with shapes, forms, plots, inventions, and stories of our own creativity. We think in terms of sparks and enthusiasms. Many of us won't 'mark' the children's work and give it grades. Our criteria on how to improve a piece of writing are often completely different from the nonsense that stems from the Gove revolution. Our idea of what makes a good piece of writing may well be very different from the nonsense to do with expanded noun phrases, subordinate clauses, fronted adverbials, embedded relative clauses. We talk about images, tension, motives, patterns, empathy, irony, mood, problems and much more of that sort of thing. 

So of course they didn't ask any of us to provide input into this deadly dull, tedious document! (Just to be clear, if they had asked me, I would have refused. I can explain why at another time.) 

So you have a document that doesn't understand what writing is, doesn't what it is to write successfully. 

Meanwhile, you may have noticed that there is what feels like a new emphasis on handwriting. (I'm agnostic about this.) On the panel, you'll see the name of Ruth Miskin. Quite coincidentally, a few days after the report appeared, Ruth Miskin put on sale a brand new handwriting package. Very handy. 

How do you become 'fluent' at reading? Ruth Miskin knows.

Maybe I'm slow off the mark here but I was alerted this week to a programme that is on sale now that will teach children 'reading fluency'. I'll come to what it is in a moment, but first a few words about where we've got to with 'learning to read'.

In 2011, I was present at the launch in the House of Commons of the Reading Association's Summer Reading Challenge, a nationwide effort to get children going to libraries and reading books. Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister at the time gave a speech. He hardly mentioned the Reading Challenge at all. He used the occasion to launch his government's policy on phonics, which would involve compulsory phonics sessions in every maintained school in England with a phonics screening test at the end of Year One. Nick Gibb said that this would 'eradicate illiteracy'. 

At the time, I thought that that was a bold claim. All sorts of efforts over the last 100 years or so in many different countries have been tried out to 'eradicate' illiteracy and to date all that had been found was that there were competing ways to 'improve' literacy. 

Digression: I was taught to read using a scheme called 'Beacon Readers'. In the teachers' guide to the scheme, the writers pointed out that it would be a great mistake to teach reading in a way that either only worked on what they called 'phonetics' (what we would now call 'phonics') or solely on 'meaning'. The scheme, they claimed, would combine both. And indeed it did. Stories, words lists using repeated phonemes all linked together. 

When Nick Gibb's phonic revolution came in, one way they did it was to claim that the obstacle facing children was 'Look and Say', a method which supposedly or actually tried to teach reading by teaching 'whole words'. What surprised me at the time was that I was of a generation that wasn't taught to read that way and yet I didn't ever hear the argument against the Beacon Readers method. 

So, phonics came in and here we are 14 or so years later, and simple question: has illiteracy been eradicated? If not, why not? If so, what are the problems that remain? 

I can't answer those questions directly but I'm picking up a few hints. Firstly, is the one concerning the Key Stage 2 scores. I've heard experts talking about how they're worried that these scores seem 'difficult to budge'. Really? Surely after all this phonics, then we should have seen huge leaps in the KS2 scores. This would be or should be the proof in the pudding. Teach phonics: push up reading scores for 11 year olds. No?

Well there's one theoretical problem here: phonics is a way of teaching the alphabetic code as an abstract skill - it matches phonemes and graphemes. It's supposed to be detached and detachable from reading-for-meaning. A good phonics performer, it's claimed, can see most words for the first time and read them or at least have a good shot at them. On the other hand, the KS2 reading test asks the children to answer questions related to the meaning. (I have strong criticisms of this but I'll leave that to one side.) The key word here is 'meaning'. 

Those of us who were critical of the phonics revolution kept using this word 'meaning'. We were (and still are) concerned that children were spending a lot of time looking at texts (reading schemes) and not relating their knowledge of the alphabetic code to meaning. As a result, the actual process of what we all commonly understand reading to be (ie reading for meaning) was, and is, taking a back seat. 

When we raised this, we've been pushed away and told that we're doubters and people who are trying to prevent children from progressing. Hmmm. The lack of 'progress' accusation seems to be the one that can be directed at this failure of the system to get the Key Stage 2 scores to budge.

Oh no, say the defenders of phonics, look out our PISA scores! What these show is that England has risen in the international table. Hooray! But they only show a tiny improvement on scores. How can that be? Well, anyone who follows football knows precisely how. You can win the league one year with,  say 85 points, but the next year you can get 85 points and come second. There is not a direct correlation between raw scores and places in a league. This elementary fact seemed to escape the notice of the commentators and, stand by for when or if this government introduces some changes to reading policies and the newspapers will again mis-read the meaning of the PISA tables. That's because they will have been briefed by people who defend the phonics revolution.

But now we have another very big hint that all might not be well with phonics revolution and 'phonics-will-eradicate-illiteracy' line. The remarkable Ruth Miskin who devised a phonics programme (as well as advised the government on phonics - surely a coincidence), has developed a reading fluency programme. 

What schools should do is buy the programme and buy the training. Of course. As a writer for children, I will immediately declare an interest here:  money from school budgets to buy Ruth Miskin's phonics programme and money from school budgets to buy Ruth Miskin's reading fluency programme is less money to buy books for children. I reveal this fact to anticipate the argument that I am only talking about this stuff because it affects my pocket. 

Nevertheless, I will take the view that Ruth Miskin herself has clocked that even her fail-safe phonics scheme may not enable children to read fluently. So, simple question again, why not?

What possible obstacle to reading fluently can there be if nearly all children are passing their phonics screening check? 

I have some recent experience of this with myself. I have done some Yiddish classes. Yiddish can be written with the same letters I'm using here (so-called 'Roman alphabet') but traditionally it's written with Hebrew letters. I have done phonics with these in order to learn them. What do you think my difficulty has been? Reading fluently! So, though I could say out loud each letter, I found recognising words and getting the 'flow' quite difficult. I think I know why. I didn't do any writing so I didn't get to express myself in writing in Yiddish (though I can say quite a lot of elementary things and colloquial stuff that my parents said.) And also I didn't immerse myself in enough simple texts to be able to become fluent. Further, in a way that is similar to English, there are exceptions to the regular forms. Unless these are artificially excluded from texts, they pose problems if you want to be fluent. 

So, excuse me for using my own experience but I can see some analogies here with the problem that I suspect even Ruth Miskin has spotted. Real texts and real reading of real texts are more complicated then saying out loud simplified texts devised in order to teach phonics.

So will Ruth Miskin's second batch of materials do the trick? I will say, in spite of my declared interest, what's the matter with real books? If the aim is to get children reading and understanding real books, why not give them real books? Why create yet another level before you get to read real books ? Anyway, there'll be fewer real books available because all the money has gone on phonics materials and fluency materials!

I am expecting there will be a third tier of materials soon. Why not the Ruth Miskin anthologies so that children won't need to read real books, instead they follow programmed reading all the way through primary schools? There really isn't any need for children to read real books at all, is there?  

Here's Ruth Miskin's fluency programme. Buy, buy, buy. 

(The title  'Beyond Phonics' is a bit of a giveway, innit? 'Beyond'? But I was told that phonics could do it all. Native speakers, people told me, would do phonics and then be able to read. I've seen TV programmes on it. But now we need 'Beyond Phonics'. Buy, buy, buy.)

https://www.ruthmiskin.com/comprehension/

Gaza: this is the word

Gaza
I'm sorry.
This.
This is the word.
This is the word that can't say.
This is the word that can't say what needs to be said.
This is the word that can't say what needs to be said about things that are being done.
This is the word that can't say what needs to be said about things that are being done to people.
This is the word that can't say what needs to be said about things that are being done.
This is the word that can't say what needs to be said.
This is the word that can't say.
This is the word.
This.
I'm sorry
Gaza.

Bulldozers just been shipped to Israel from US. Here's a poem about bulldozers.

 July 9 2025, headline in Times of Israel

IDF receives bulldozer shipment from US that was reportedly held up by Biden administration

One day...

...people made

the bulldozer:

a great power that could be put to many uses,

the bulldozer could move earth

so that there could be roads

and railways

and we would rush along

moving between villages, towns and cities

sharing what we make and know.

River banks and sea walls could be built

with a bulldozer

so that the floods wouldn’t come

and overwhelm us.

The earth could be flattened

by a bulldozer

so that we could have houses

and flats to live in.

And it was good.

And then one day

people 

saw that the great bulldozer 

could flatten the houses and flats

that men, women and children live in,

these the men, women and children

who the people didn’t like

men, women and children 

who the people didn’t want to be there

and these men, women and children 

would have to move, go, 

transfer to somewhere else.

And it was said

that if ever there were men, women and children

who got in the way of the bulldozer

they could be flattened.

Yes

people made the bulldozer.

The great bulldozer

a powerful invention that 

can be put to many uses.

I give you:

the bulldozer.

Writing Framework: no poetry? no drama? Why not?

 In the 1950s and 60s when I was at school, there was a simple and basic way that English regarded the field of writing: it was made up of plays, poems, fiction and non-fiction. As a result, examples of these were put in front of us, and we spent time writing our own versions of these. 

At the time, some teachers pointed out that there were other kinds of writing that were getting overlooked by this curriculum: song lyrics, TV drama scripts and that there was a general neglect of the field of 'orality' eg storytelling, everyday speech and telling anecdotes, wisdom carried in what people say in terms of idioms and proverbs. 

Since 1988, various governments have taken it upon themselves to intervene in what was a rich dialogue between teachers, university researchers, teacher trainers and writers, as expressed through organisations like the Schools Council, the London Association of the Teaching of English, the National Association of the Teaching of English, the English Association, the English and Media Centre, the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education and others. 

Some of these government interventions have been disastrous: none so obvious than the SPaG, then GPS test in primary schools which has changed the meaning of the word 'writing' in primary schools. The so-called 'expected levels' of writing have skewed 'writing' to mean fulfilling the norms of the GPS test. Assessing writing has ended up as tick-boxing children performing the right numbers of 'fronted adverbials', 'subordinate clauses', 'expanded noun phrases', 'embedded relative clauses' and so on. Pushed out of sight has been the sense that the purpose of writing might be to convey ideas, feelings, emotions, thoughts and experiences. 

The present government has picked up where the others left off and produced a new Writing Framework. Again, the model is the one we have come to expect: people in government go away into a huddle, take 'evidence' and produce a 'report' that is a genre all of its own. It's not a book, it's not a speech, it's not the opening document for discussion. It's what claims to be some kind of defining and ultimate statement - in this case on 'writing'.  We're not supposed to notice the arrogance of this. It's just become the norm of what we have come to expect since 1988. The 'huddle' will tell us what writing is.

As it happens, the 'huddle' seems ignorant of some key features of what writing is. Why is the sole focus of the document on standard English extended prose? If we just start with 'Literature', we know that it's made up of poetry, drama as well as fiction. 

Is the message of this document that children shouldn't be writing poetry and drama? Really? If so, why not? What's the theory here? Pedagogic or literary? 

The whole document seems to turn on the axis of the 'sentence'. As I've tried to show in the previous blogs here, I don't think this is accurate. Writing is much more various than what is described here.

In a future blog, I'll take up the question of why a document written in 2025 doesn't seem to know about stylistics and narratology. These sounds like very dry, academic ideas but as I've tried to show in blogs and booklets, these ideas open up many fascinating and exciting ways in which we can talk about writing with children. One example: how do we get readers to want to know what comes next in a story? The best trick we have at our disposal is 'reveal-conceal' - a method of by which the writer 'reveals' something but in so doing 'conceals' or 'hints at' or invites the curiosity of the reader to want to know more. 

It's great fun to experiment with this core idea of fiction writing. Think  of the opening words of 'Hamlet' - 'Who's there?' The 'reveal' is that two people are on the castle battlements and that they want to know what's going on? The 'conceal' is that the writing doesn't tell us at that point what IS going on! As a result, we want to know. 

If you're looking for this kind of suggestion, idea, thought in a document on writing given out by the government - like Macavity the cat, it's not there. 

And so, on we go, with government 'huddles' thinking that they know better than teachers, researchers and writers. The joke is that the document is itself a piece of writing. And as an example of writing, it is of course deadly boring. Whoever wrote it, knows how to write but doesn't know how to write, if you get me. They can string sentences along. They can 'demonstrate' and 'expound' but they certainly can't 'fascinate'. Lols. (Is 'Lols' a sentence?) 

New Writing Framework - sentences. Not.

 The new Writing Framework is largely structured round the idea that writing is made up of sentences. This is summed up in their false statement:  'All writing is ultimately made up of sentences'.

The fact is that most standard English extended prose is made up of sentences. It's plainly wrong to say that 'all writing is ultimately made up of sentences'. In this blog I give plenty of examples of writing that is not made up of sentences: 

https://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2024/06/whats-happened-to-sentence-does-it.html

A few moments thought, and we can easily find others: powerpoint presentations, titles, slogans, lists - and talking of lists - there's another way in which we have been writing for hundreds of years without making a sentence: proverbs and idioms. Here's a list of some of them.

More haste, less speed.

Cold hands, warm heart.

Jack of all trades, master of none.

Like father, like son.

No rest of the wicked.

Once bitten, twice shy.

Out of the frying pan into the fire.

Penny wise, pound foolish.,

Slow but sure.

To each his own.

Too little, too late.

Whatever floats your boat. 

The New Writing Framework - first thoughts

 I've had a quick look at the new writing framework. Here are my first observations.

1. Don't come to this document for inspiration, excitement or fun. The theme that is repeated over and over again is that writing is hard and can't be done in a joyful way.  

2. There is a strong element in the document that writing comes about through building blocks. To be fair, it's not the only element in the document but it's the one that's easiest to get hold of, and, I suggest, the one most seductive for a particular mechanical way of teaching and running a writing curriculum. 

3. Only one kind of writing seems to be being discussed: extended prose written in standard English . This is a misrepresentation of what writing is. Here are some examples of writing that is not always extended prose: poetry, song lyrics, film scripts, play scripts, dialogue in novels, ads on billboards, the scripts for ads we see on TV, notes on power points, lists, notes for speeches that we might give, a lot of rules, instructions, directions that are written up in public places, a good deal of writing in the digital sphere (texts, chat room chat, comments threads, posts on  social media etc), slogans, titles, powerpoint presentations, proverbs and idioms that are self-enclosed

 (see https://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2025/07/new-writing-framework-sentences-not.html).

It's worth remembering that a lot of this is the daily language of the modern world and being good at it, is a highly commercial skill to have! You could argue that by schools not helping children write in these ways, we are depriving them of marketability! 

4. There is a sad irony that a document on writing hardly talks about how we might convey feelings, tension, excitement, lyricism, horror, fear, intrigue etc etc in writing.  It's as if learning how to write is an exercise in being correct (or becoming more and more correct). 

5. Don't come to this document looking for ways in which reading exciting and engrossing books is the best platform for talk and writing. Don't come to it looking for a raft of exciting ways in which we can use what's in great books, as triggers for children to express ideas and feelings triggered by what they read. 

6. I spotted two inaccuracies: 'All writing is ultimately made up of sentences'. This is an ignorant and silly thing to say. There are 100s of different ways of not writing in sentences. Shakespeare was brilliant at it. Stand on any station and look at the ads. Look at any film script. Go on the internet and look at song lyrics. Go through the collected works of many poets. 

The second inaccuracy is about 'adverbials'. You'll find this in the glossary. As people will know from what I've written elsewhere, the obsession with 'adverbials' is absurd. It isolates one tiny feature of 'stylistics' and magnifies it to the detriment of many other stylistic features which would help children write. It seems that the people who've written this document have never come across a book about stylistics. That's possible! 

Even so, the last 15 years has seen an obsession with adverbials. What are they? They are adverbs, adverbial phrases and adverbial clauses. In this document, for some mysterious reason, they don't include adverbial clauses. So, to recap, here are three sentences using fronted adverbials. The first one uses a fronted adverb. The second one uses a fronted adverbial phrase. The third one uses a fronted adverbial clause.

Luckily, I found my pen.

With a smile on my face, I left the room.

When it's hot, I take my jacket off.

In short, the very same people who obsessively peddle this stuff don't even know their own 'grammar'. You can find the same mistakes on the 'expected levels' examples on gov.uk where someone has called an adverbial phrase a subordinate clause. The truth of the matter is, the people who write this stuff, demand high levels of correctness from children but find it so difficult themselves, they keep getting it wrong themselves.