ABSTRACT
Creative writers have been telling us for a number of years now that we have taken a wrong turning in the way we are currently approaching writing in school. David Almond in his Carnegie Medal acceptance speech in 1999 warned against the ‘noses-to-the-grindstone treadmill kind of work … that is observable, recordable and well-nigh constant’ and pleaded for ‘moments when children must be left alone, given space and silence and respect’ (Almond 1999). Philip Pullman has echoed this, pointing out forcefully that writing does not happen in the way the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) suggests it should, and recalling, by contrast, times as a teacher when ‘a child in my class discovered that he or she could take time and write something true and meaningful’ (Pullman 2003: 11). Most recently, the Children’s Laureate, Michael Morpurgo, has taken the Year 6 SATs writing tests himself to highlight what he feels is the impossibility of ‘completing a story to order in exam conditions’ (Neill 2003: 10).
