In the Digital Age of computers, keyboards, tablets and smartphones there is still a daily need to write by hand with a pen or pencil and that includes children. In schools all over the country, right now, children still have to write things down, to take notes in class or answer questions in exams which means every child must be able to write well.  Take secondary schoo...

The Army has a saying – no plan survives the first contact – and from my experience over the last four months, I would have to agree with them. If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that at the start of this academic year Start-Bee launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to turn my Start-Bee handwriting method from an after-school’s club programme to a pl...

Did you know Apple’s Steve Jobs spent 30 hours handwriting his presentations before producing his Powerpoint slides?  Even in the digital age, the act of writing has many benefits for everyone.  Fact.  Putting pen to paper opens up parts of the brain required for concentration, creativity and problem solving; tests show that writing something down on paper improves recall. ...

Who needs to write when they can type, right?  Wrong! There is clear scientific evidence that children who can write are able to access the entire education curriculum more efficiently than children who cannot write well enough. Take secondary school pupil and Start-Bee success story, Adam, he was struggling to read his own handwriting and so was his maths teacher. How ca...

Digital age or not, there’s no denying the benefits of being able to hold a pen to paper and communicate effectively.  Not only does the ability to write legibly make the school curriculum accessible to a child or young adult, it also unlocks a career path and the potential for people to choose their own futures. Learning to write is a physically taught skill yet while some ...

Did you know that one in ten UK children in the UK, according to the British Dyslexia Association, is affected by dyslexia?  Did you also know that dyslexic children are taught, certainly in UK schools, using the same fonts and approaches as ‘neutral’ learners? Problem is, as any dyslexic, like Dr Christian Boer, will tell you the process of learning to read and write is not...

As a new academic year begins, one child in three , 1.7m UK children, will start secondary school unable to write properly.  That’s a whole third of a class from every state primary school in the UK unable to join up their letters. In a digital world that might not seem such a huge deal; however, handwriting is a skill that is fundamental to unlocking a child’s potential in ...