DURING the past four years, I have written many words in The TES supporting the National Literacy Strategy. Since I am not (and have never been) an employee of the NLS, this support has been entirely voluntary - based on admiration for the strategy’s emphasis on subject knowledge and practical teaching strategies, and on the opinions of teachers. Once through the pain barrier of the strategy’s introduction, the overwhelming majority of teachers attending my literacy courses were in favour of it. And that has been a lot of teachers - thousands and thousands of them, all over the country.

Most teachers felt that the strategy had the potential to improve the quality of their literacy teaching - and thus to raise standards. But they had reservations, two of which stand out from the rest.

The first is that there has never been enough time to implement the strategy, or anything else, properly. Useful subject knowledge and great teaching techniques are all very well, but it takes time to absorb them into practice. Time to review and reflect on the new material, to integrate it with the rest of the curriculum and make it work in your own classroom with your own pupils. Time, simply, to teach - which is very tricky when government initiatives come thick and fast, and workload seems to swell daily.

The second big worry is the extent to which national tests and targets now drive everything in education, including the NLS - a feeling that statistics have become more important than children. As the 2002 tests loom, teachers grow ever more concerned about the pressure they are under to teach to the test, the loss of a “broad and balanced curriculum”, the way prescription can so easily take the place of professionalism. (“I hate the idea of using a script, but I haven’t the energy to argue,” said one the other day). And, of course, the first batch of scripts is now available on the strategy website: complete literacy lessons for Year 6, down to the very words you speak.

Researchers from the University of Ontario, who monitor the NLS and the National Numeracy Strategy for the Government, have been picking up the same messages. In chapter six of their latest report, Watching and Learning 2 (www.standards.dfes.gov.ukliteracypublications) they voice concerns about the policy of “pressure and support”. While the pressure of tests and targets was helpful in the early stages they see signs that it is beginning to lead to “a culture of dependence that could reduce the sense of professional autonomy, enterprise spirit and responsibility for continuously seeking ways of improving professional practice”.

Unfortunately, the Government listens neither to teachers nor to their own critical friends. Now that the 2002 targets are within reach, instead of backing off, they have introduced more pressure - harder, more challenging targets for 2004 (85 per cent of Year 6 pupils to reach Level 4 in maths and English, and 35 per cent of them to get a Level 5).

If they would just let teachers get on with it, without imposing any more artificial outside pressure, the good work going on in schools would mean that standards would almost certainly rise. But if they keep up their target nonsense, the “unintended costs and consequences” noted by the Ontario researchers will continue to undermine good teaching.

So I am starting a campaign for anyone wanting a return to greater professional autonomy in primary education. It is called Time To Teach and it asks for two things: first, that the new targets be dropped; second, a break from government interference - a moratorium.

Remember that five-year moratorium on change promised to primary schools in the mid-1990s, when Sir Ron Dearing recognised that teachers were exhausted by 10 years of educational reform? It did not last, of course: within no time Labour were elected and started their own programme of reform. Primary teachers were remarkably forgiving - they recognised the strength of the two strategies and pulled out all the stops to make them successful. But now they deserve to get the rest of their moratorium. They deserve some time... to be trusted to get on with their job, to use all that NLS and NNS have given them and raise standards through good teaching, not short-term responses to targets. Time, in fact, to teach.

If you would like to register your support for the Time to Teach campaign, please visit www.timetoteach.org.uk or send an SAE to Time To Teach, 11 St George’s Road, Truro, Cornwall, TR1 3JE. Sue Palmer is an independent writer and in-service provider who has contributed to many NLS training packages and writes on literacy teaching in TES Primary magazine Have your say on tests and targets at www.tes.co.uk