Responding to the Motion Report
In 2010, Arts Council England commissioned a report from The Book Trust, in partnership with Andrew Motion about Poetry in schools with some fairly alarming results. It stated as its key points that:
- teachers felt under-confident in teaching poetry
- the range of poetry offered in schools was too narrow
- there was a need to find more stimulating ways of teaching poetry and that the digital offer could be vastly improved
- there was a wider cultural challenge in convincing people about the benefits and accessibility of poetry
- organisations needed to work more closely together in the sector to create a more cohesive approach to poetry nationwide
Our new education game, The Generator, is a critically important element of Winning Words which aims to reach all schools and give a fresh approach to teaching poetry. We have aimed to create a resource that addresses the points raised in the report to ensure that our resource is key to the development of poetry in classrooms all over the country.
Andrew Motion, who was also Poet Laureate 1999 – 2009, said “Poetry has a special role in the life of young people, but is often seen as ‘a problem’ by many in the classroom. Initiatives like Winning Words help make poetry inviting to schools and irresistible to young people, and celebrate a vital component of our early years, one that allows people to discover what it means to be more completely and intensely a human being. ”
If you would like to read the whole report, you can download it here.