One hundred schools in the North of England are to take part in a trial to see whether mastery of handwriting would improve attainment by “freeing up” children’s minds for learning.

Primary school children in Year 2 and Year 5 will be supported to improve their fine motor skills in order to help their handwriting.

The research is being funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and will be carried out by academics at Leeds University.

The EEF’s description of the project says: “Good handwriting is not solely about presentation. The evidence suggests that, if handwriting is slow or effortful, then children are less able to think about the content of their writing.

“Therefore, it is important to focus on developing a fast and accurate handwriting style.”

The project aims to train Year 2 teachers and Year 5 teaching assistants to use approaches normally used by occupational therapists to improve children’s handwriting.

Primary schools in the North East, Leeds and Bradford are now being recruited to take part in the trial, which will be carried out over the next academic year.

Effect on attainment

Mark Mon-Wiliams, a professor at Leeds University’s faculty of medicine and health, said the project was not only about finding ways of helping children to improve their handwriting, but also to discover any broader effect on their performance in school.

He told Tes that the research aimed to measure the impact of improving children’s handwriting in “freeing up their cognitive resource”.

“The proof of the success of this will not just be about their handwriting, but the performance of the children - their educational attainment. If we can show that improving their handwriting has had an impact on their attainment [then the intervention will be seen as successful],” he said.

In a controlled trial, help with handwriting will be given to Year 2 children, as well as some pupils in Year 5 who have been identified as having handwriting problems.

Other schools taking part will receive no support, in order to provide a basis for comparison.

Prof Mon-Williams said the work would involve getting children to develop fine motor skills through play in order to develop their dexterity.

These activities will then be used to help children develop an automatic handwriting style.

The project is part of the EEF’s North East Primary Literacy campaign, which has identified handwriting as being a high priority for schools.

The campaign has seen the EEF commit £5m to projects that boost literacy in the North East.

Schools are being recruited for the  Helping Handwriting Shine trial now.

An evaluation report on the research will be produced in 2020.