Parents should put down phones and speak to children to boost vocabulary, author Philip Pullman has urged

The author accused the government of having an exams 'fetish' that is ruining children's lives

Philip Pullman has weighed in on the debate about how parents can boost children’s language skills (AFP)

Parents need to get off their mobile phones and speak to young children to boost their vocabulary, acclaimed author Philip Pullman has said.

The His Dark Materials author believes families should help improve the language skills of their children before they start school through conversation, games and nursery rhymes.

“It fills me with despair when I see somebody pushing a pushchair along with a child in it and the parents walking along behind them talking into a mobile phone," Pullman said.

“Don’t exclude the child from conversations. Talk to them, engage them. They won’t understand everything you say but they love to be engaged. And that’s by far the best foundation for success in all sorts of language later on, reading, writing, talking listening. It’s incomparably important.”

The celebrated author’s comments come after a study earlier this year found that nearly half of five and six-year-olds are at risk of underperforming because they have a limited vocabulary.

Following the study, the government announced it would give parents advice on how to sing nursery rhymes and teach the alphabet to children before they start school in a bid to close the word gap.

In an interview with Press Association, Pullman added that setting tests and making children learn “lists of words” was not an effective way of boosting vocabulary.

The author accused the government of having an exams “fetish” that is ruining children’s lives and called for tests such as SATs to be scrapped in favour of teachers and children reading for pleasure.

“They seem to be doing their best to ruin children’s lives. We hear of the desperate straits that some children get into now, older children who are facing GCSEs and A-levels and so on. It’s entirely unnecessary,” he said.

Pullman added: “Yes, we have to test children, at some stages of education. Of course we do. They have to have exams, but to make them a complete fetish and to make the very existence of the school depend on their success in the league tables is just monstrous. It’s absolutely monstrous.

“There’s no need for it whatsoever. It’s damaging, it’s destructive, it’s entirely counter-productive.”

Instead of focusing on passing tests and “drilling” facts – which he said destroys childhoods – he believes children should learn about nature to make them aware of the damage being caused to the environment.

Pullman said: “It should start with going outside and playing about and splashing in streams and ponds and making sandcastles and doing all that sort of stuff that children like doing. It’s not just a body of knowledge that you have to be instructed about – it’s play, enjoying life, having fun.”

The author is not the first to weigh in on the debate around parents’ role in boosting children’s language skills before they turn up to school.

Last month, Amanda Spielman, head of Ofsted, raised her concerns about the word gap. Following her speech to nursery leaders, early years experts suggested that the fact that a lot of parents were spending time on their phones had contributed to poor language skills among young children.

The government launched two programmes in April this year worth £13.5m to give families extra support to help boost preschool children’s language and communication skills at home.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We want to unlock the world of reading for pupils so that every child can not only read and write to a high standard, but can also develop a love for reading that will last until adulthood.

“That is why improving literacy is at the heart of this government’s drive to improve standards in our schools and assessments do play an important role in making sure children are taught well.

“And the results speak for themselves – young readers in England are now ranked amongst the best in the world and there are now 154,000 more six-year-olds on track to become fluent readers than in 2012.”

Additional reporting by PA