English is one of the least popular subjects among primary school pupils, research involving thousands of children has revealed.

The University of Glasgow study has been described as “depressing” by a literacy expert who blamed the “phonics, phonics, phonics” mantra in early primary.

The researchers found that literacy and language, and RME, were the least popular subjects - and their popularity waned over the 10-month period covered by the study.

While P5-7 children generally became more negative towards school and the subjects they were studying, it was only in RME and English where less than 25 per cent said they liked the subjects a lot by the end of the period.

The report states: “RME/RE and language and literacy were the least popular subjects among pupils. In addition, these subjects also saw the greatest negative movement in pupil attitudes towards them between the baseline and follow-up survey.”

The findings are at draft stage and the researchers were unable to point to a particular cause for the unpopularity.

But Vivienne Smith, an expert in literacy at the University of Strathclyde, said: “This is so depressing because language is so rich and exciting and vibrant and fun, and that’s what I want the language curriculum to be like. It should be a place where children are stretched and taken to new worlds.”

However, schools focused too much on the mechanics of language and not enough on the purpose of reading and writing, she said.

Dr Smith continued: “In reading in the early years it’s phonics, phonics, phonics. In writing, we are so busy with full stops and finger spaces [between words that] we forget about communicating.

“When children write, we need to respond to what they say in terms of the content. I want a writing curriculum where the teacher says things like ‘You really made me laugh’, rather than ‘You have used 15 good adjectives’.”

The research was based on surveys of 4,989 P2-7 pupils. It found the most popular subjects at primary to be PE, ICT and science.

The aim of the research was to see if training a primary teacher from every school in a cluster to become a science and technology mentor had a positive impact on pupil engagement with science. Such training is provided by the Scottish Schools Education Research Centre. The study showed that the CPD programme was working, researchers said.

The findings are in line with previous research showing that the programme boosts teacher confidence in delivering science (see box, below). But this is the first time that pupils have been surveyed.

Pupils’ confidence in completing a range of science tasks - particularly those associated with planning and carrying out experiments - grew after their schools took part in the programme, the researchers found.

Information on the least popular subjects was collected because researchers wanted to compare the popularity of science relative to other areas of the curriculum. The full findings of the study are expected in June.

A Scottish government spokesperson said: “Education Scotland’s Literacy and English Review, published in 2015, found that most primary schools offer children very good opportunities to read for pleasure as part of their broad general education.

“We are taking further steps to ensure literacy and language learning continues to be engaging. This includes the First Minister’s reading challenge, which is being expanded to P1-3 from August, helping to promote and support a reading culture in schools.”