The formal spelling, punctuation and grammar test is stifling children’s creativity and making them afraid to write from the heart, headteachers have warned.

The NAHT headteachers’ union has voted to call on the government to make the test at key stage 2 optional for schools

Heads at the union’s annual conference in Telford were told that the test had led to a tick-box mentality which did not allow teachers to teach children how to write with flair.

Guide: Telling verbs and adjectives apart

Quick read: Grammar lesson ‘confuses pupils’

Background: How hard was Spag test?

The spelling, punctuation and grammar (Spag) test has been taken in Year 6 along with key stage 2 Sats since 2013.

Last year’s Spag test consisted of two papers: a 45-minute question-and-answer booklet and a 15-minute spelling test, in which the teacher read out 20 words that the pupils had to write in their answer booklet.

Spag test pressure

Cumbrian headteacher Maggie Cole said: “I absolutely love grammar. We need those skills to encourage and enhance children’s writing skills, but we are in danger of making it so they are scared to write from the heart because everything has to be so grammatically correct -  it becomes a tick-box exercise which is not encouraging writing.”

She also told the NAHT conference that young children were being asked to learn about technical terms which they don’t use when they move on to secondary school.

Ms Cole added: “During our transition meetings with local secondary schools they tell us they very rarely refer to more technical side of the grammar. They say, ‘We might talk about nouns, verbs and adjectives but we very rarely talk about noun phrases and other things.;

“Why are we putting our young children through a test which tests them on things which in a few years’ time they are not even going to need.” 

She highlighted an example of secondary teachers taking the test and only a handful passing. 

Fellow Cumbrian head Graham Frost, who proposed the motion, said: “This high-stakes test does skew what is taught, when it is taught, how it is taught and what amount is taught.   

“It makes us pedantic about the teaching of those things, and it is to the detriment of flow.”

He said teachers were presented with pieces of pupils’ work “which has greater depth but has no flair”.

“It might tick all the boxes but it doesn’t flow,” he said. “What we are calling for here is the freedom to be able to teach in a way that is very skilled - which we are all capable of - which is pragmatic and which enables us to be able to teach pupils to write effectively with good grammar, good spelling and good punctuation.

“At the moment we are very shackled by the test.”

The motion was passed by an overwhelming majority.