Are primary schools teaching un-creative writing?

As a group of award-winning authors send a petition to the education secretary about the problem of over-complex writing taught in primary schools, teenager Ella Slater agrees – and talks about the language detox she had to undertake once she got to secondary school

A group of authors, including the UK’s most recent Carnegie medallist Tanya Landman, who are preparing to contact the education secretary, are complaining about the damaging effects of abolishing simplistic writing in the primary school classroom. This I can testify for, since I was one of those affected by the curriculum’s drive for flowery vocabulary and sentences stuffed full of similes and metaphors. Now, in the midst of GCSEs at secondary school, I’m finding myself undertaking a dramatic detox in my writing; facing my fear of “boring” words like “big” and “small”.

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