A handwriting expert believes just 10 minutes of practice in junior classes a day could turn around our falling literacy rates.

But a survey of 850 teachers last year found almost 90 percent of those trained in the last 20 years received no instruction on how to teach handwriting.

Education researcher Helen Walls told Kate Hawkesby there's been an emphasis put on ideas children want to express in writing and the fundamental technical skills have been neglected.

She says until those technical skills are automated children can't think about the creative aspects.

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