This section provides a brief resume of the national and international coverage on Handwriting.
29th June 2011
The Guardian
It has long been a painful rite of passage for German schoolchildren – learning "die Schreibschrift", a fiddly form of joined-up handwriting all pupils are expected to have mastered by the time they leave primary school.
But now, many German teachers have had enough, insisting it is a waste of time to force children to learn a cursive script when they have already learned to print letters at kindergarten. Furthermore, they say, the joined-up handwriting is often illegible.
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19th June 2011
The Independent
Email, text and Twitter were said to be the final nails in its coffin. But as with Mark Twain – a great exponent of the art – reports of the death of letter writing have been greatly exaggerated. Increasingly, people are forgoing the gratification of instant electronic communication for a slower, more personal approach – letter writing is experiencing a revival, and the art of saying thank you is central to its resurgence.
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18th October 2010
The Independent
Handwriting has fallen from favour in our schools and offices, but a new hi-tech pen is trying to change the script. Michael Bywater isn't convinced that it makes its mark.
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12th October 2010
Daily Mail Online
A head has banned fountain pens in his school for fear pupils who use them will be marked down in exams.
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9th November 2008
Jack Grimston and Dipesh Gadher The Sunday Times
Children are struggling at school because they don't know if they are left or right-handed.
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17th October 2008
Adi Bloom TES
Bad handwriting isn't just hard to read - it can limit exam success by as much as 40 per cent.
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5th September 2008
The TES
Handwriting is so poor that papers are illegible, examiners' report says. Suzanne Tiburtius, information officer for the National Handwriting Association, said that children's handwriting had become "immeasurably worse" in recent years. She believes that teacher training needed to improve because research had suggested that less than half of teachers had received any instruction on the subject during their PGCE courses.
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8th June 2008
The Times
Scotland's chief examiners want handwriting classes to be introduced because many pupils no longer know how to write longhand.
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8th June 2008
Gillian Bowditch, The Times
Making children perfect their handwriting in the internet age is pointless.
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