Handwriting

At the beginning of this academic year I came across a boy in my Year 6 English set whose handwriting was barely legible. He had ideas, he had a good vocabulary, he understood the structure of texts and sentences but you couldn't read what he had written. At parents' evening a few weeks ago his parents told me they couldn't read his writing either and pleaded with me to help. So I sent him home with a handwriting text book and exercise book and for the past few weeks his parents have made him sit down and do handwriting practice every single night (I know this as he's been quite vocal in complaining about it!).

This week he brought in his handwriting book to show me and I was shocked, I actually questioned whether it was him who had done this beautifully precise handwriting. Yesterday he did a piece of writing for me in a lesson and I was even more shocked! It's one thing to do lovely writing in a handwriting book but another to actually put it into pratice away from the exercises. A few weeks of regular handwriting practice has completely transformed the way this boy writes.

Today I was talking about him and showing his work to a Key Practitioner I'm working with and she made a comment which she admitted was a sweeping generalisation, but which was that in her experience children in year 5 & 6 in middle schools have much worse handwriting and presentation than those in the same year groups in primary schools. Which got me wondering why. Is it that middle schools but less emphasis on presentation and so the children just don't care what their work looks like? Or is it that middle school teachers don't teach 'handwriting'? When was the last time this boy did 'handwriting' in a lesson at school?

I taught English in year 5 last year and my group did regular handwriting practice but I'm not aware of other teachers in my school doing the same. This year I haven't done it with my year 6 group at all. I suppose my attitude was that if they could get to age 10 and their writing was still that terrible (and so many of them are!) then there wasn't a lot I could do to change it, I saw handwriting as something they focus on in KS1 and not really relevant in Year 6. The change in this boy has made me realise it's something I shouldn't forget about and that for many of them it isn't too late.

I'm interested to know if the comment that was made today is generally true, there are many things Primary schools are better at than Middle schools for children in KS2, is the problem of handwriting and presentation another one?