AIBU just tell my son he doesn’t have to do cursive writing anymore?

Well mass education can't suit all is what I meant to say.

Lots of things are discriminatory in a school system where one approach is supposed to fit all. Putting me on an athletics pitch in PE back in the day was discriminatory. I could never throw a ball or jump and 20 years later instill can't do any of those things. Didn't help my self esteem anymore than kids who find hand writing hard or kids who have specific challenges. It's life and we either accept it, moan on Mumsnet or challenge the system through our MPs.
Education can never fit all and that's the problem.

I completely agree with you, cursive is pointless if it's making his writing worse. Shouldn't make a difference to SATs at all. Where it might make a difference is speed when he gets to GCSEs because cursive is quicker if done correctly.
He would probably benefit from "un-learning" cursive then learning again in a year or so.
My DD is year 9 and they do still hand write quite a lot of work in secondary so legible handwriting is the most important thing

But cursive writing is unfair and quite discriminatory for something that is a completely unnecessary skill. It isn't just problematic for people with dyslexia/dyspraxia, it's a nightmare for a lot of people who are left-handed. A few people on this thread have said cursive writing is faster, and this might be true if you are right-handed, but it is often a nightmare for left handers. I have beautiful handwriting now, but I used to get marked down over and over again for being terrible at cursive. People who are left handed tend to hold their pen more straight, which makes it harder to join letters like that. You could try learn an alternative way, but most schools don't spend time on the difference between left and right, so it's frustrating. Don't even get me started on my school insisting on fountain pens, which is outright evil for a left-hander.

I could perhaps understand if this was a necessary thing you'd need later and which has no alternatives, but that isn't true. To me it feels like telling all girls they have to pee standing up, because 'that's how we do it'. Despite there being no issue with sitting down - the same thing is achieved.

I've been delayed in quite a few motor skills because the world only teaches the right-handed way, and it is super frustrating. Of course there are lots of reasons to struggle with handwriting, but in this day and age it's infuriating that we cannot just accommodate for it. It's so easy to do!

How do you know most aren't? I'm not saying the curriculum is right, it really isn't but it is what it is. It's a bit like choosing a strand from the secondary curriculum and saying "well that's a bit hard and might knock their confidence so we'll just ignore it if it gets a bit hard".

It's life unfortunately and while I don't agree with the previous government about cursive handwriting being a priority, it is what it is.

I know why, but find it inexcusable that pupils are made to feel that they’re not good enough because of their writing. It’s usually boys, and it has a real effect on their self-esteem. There are supportive, positive ways to encourage good handwriting, it’s a shame more primary schools aren’t using them.

In terms of how much it matters in later life - not much.

But for now, I can't believe it's impossible for him to learn a different way. Bribe him with chocolate or something. I wouldn't expect the school to tell all kids to write cursive but not yours as he finds it hard. He needs to persevere. Working on one letter at a time if necessary.

I don't think 'if you find something hard, try a bit then if it still doesn't work give up and get your mum to see if they'll change the rules for you' is really the life lesson he needs.

Cursive is supposed to be quicker but I never learned and still got all As / A*s at GCSEs with severe dyslexia and no extra time. I think it’s more important children learn how to write fast using their preferred writing style.

Ds2 has just gone off to uni and is finally allowed to type his work, he types at professional level typing speed but his handwriting has always been inconsistent and messy. He just cannot master it. School were really good about it, tried all sorts and then said I can read it so it doesn't matter if it isn't the taught method.

A lovely teacher also blew his mind and told him that pen licenses were silly because even if you are still using a pencil on the last day of year 6 everyone uses a pen in year 7. I was really pleased about that because lots of children lord their pen licence over others. He also hated handwriting pens and didn't like the way they felt in his hand. I agree with him, I have favourite pens.

I would time your son writing cursive for a few minutes then write the same thing again in his own handwriting and see how many more sentences he writes, then go and talk to his teacher.

Cursive writing can get in the bin! My son is dyslexic and can't read cursive writing, the whole of primary school I was reminding teachers not to use it on the board etc. They all respond ' oh yes, we did learn that in the dyslexia training' but it continued. It's madness, his dyslexia is so severe that his writing is at yr1 level and he is in yr7 and it took so much badgering by me to get the school to 'allow' him to use print rather than cursive.

IME cursive gets dropped as soon as they get to secondary. I'm a dinosaur and write in cursive with a fountain pen. No one can read it apart from me. My kids hardwiriting is lovely, non cursive and readable.

I would (check with the school first just in case) definitely encourage him to print his letters in spelling tests. That just seems logical to me anyway. They are assessing letter by letter and you also want him to be thinking about each letter he writes.

Otherwise, and this might not work, could you get him interested in something like calligraphy? If you like art etc there's lots involved like drawing celtic knots and you also learn sort of the logic of doing certain letter joins even if the calligraphy itself is super time consuming.

I'm 53 and have stopped cursive writing... people can now read my handwriting.
Utter bollox to try to make kids do this

If you're a high school English teacher you'll be aware why primary schools HAVE to push this, otherwise they'd have little to no pupils at the expected standard in writing. Then they'd get slated by Ofsted and parents.

i used to write normal letters and add the joined up bits where needed

I'm a high school English teacher, and primary schools’ insistence on cursive writing is the bane of my life! Every year I get a handful of reluctant writers who were told that their handwriting was no good and now consider themselves ‘rubbish at English’. Their minds are properly blown when I tell them that as long as they can write legibly, it really doesn’t matter whether it’s cursive or not.

And don’t get me started on bloody pen licenses …!

My DS11 just started year 7 gave up joined up writing in year 6. He writes beautifully but just not joined up. It didn't matter to his SATS scores, he still got very good results. His writing, when trying to join was illegible and it looked like he spelt words incorrectly when he hadn't. His secondary school don't care how he writes.

My DS14, year 10 he also struggled to write joined up and stopped as soon as he hit secondary school. However he now does a mix of both, some letters joined some jot everything is perfectly legible.

The emphasis on cursive writing in upper primary is pointless and in many cases self-defeating. But hey, it's a requirement for SATs, so who cares if it destroys a kid's self esteem.

Anyway, yes it's required to hit age expected for writing, no it makes no difference to any other paper. My son needed his papers partly transcribed for SATs because his writing is often illegible if writing at speed. He got nearly full marks in Reading, and great marks in Maths too, SPAG was a comfortable pass which for a child with Dyslexia/Dyspraxia was pretty fantastic.

It's a shame he doesn't have the life skill of being able to write legibly, which he could have achieved if he wasn't forced to write bad cursive for years and told that he wasn't trying hard enough. On the other hand, hardly anyone writes anything now anyway, and after a few months of arguing his secondary school gave him a laptop. At secondary school writing needs to be legible, not pretty.

It's not necessarily that simple. My son was not joining letters correctly for a long time, he was one of the year group where they taught cursive straight away without printing letters first and then hit by covid in Year 1. He wouldn't let me correct him and would actually get really upset as he believed he was doing it the way school had showed him. As he was meeting all other targets, school were uninterested in correcting it even though I raised it multiple times. So, this just re-enforced what he was doing as if it was wrong, school would correct it, wouldn't they? Well, no, not until a couple of years later.

This will show you that cursive is part of reaching the expected standard in writing. It doesn't matter for SATs but it does for writing as there's no SATs test for writing. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-assessment-frameworks-at-the-end-of-key-stage-2

I'd just teach him semi-cursive. I just made the term up, but it's what I do.

Joining up letters IS quicker, but for some letters (like anything after a lower case b, or s) it can be a real pain. At the end of the day, he's going to be the only one who reads his handwriting (even if we're talking scientific written journals, which are meant to be left at the institution for future reference).

HRTFT but I’d say it’s fine to drop cursive for now but try to revisit it when he’s older. It seems to have some strong mental benefits so it’s worth learning if he can, but for now legibility and speed will benefit him far more.

It's also a bit silly in the 21st century. I work in communications, so arguably a role that requires lots of writing, but also lots of meetings and note taking etc.

I am now at the point where 1 A4 notebook can last me well over 6 months. I buy a pack of two once a year, or less. I record my briefing calls so I have transcripts and only take enough notes to get the big picture - and even then, I often find it easier just to make notes directly onto my computer.

I'm not saying we shouldn't learn to write, but I do think schools need to wake up to the reality that our children don't need to learn to write long, complex things physically any more.

The only issue is that technically, at the end of yr6, his teacher can not assess him as ‘at expected’ in writing if he is not joining his letters.
It’s a load of bollocks but that is the standard set.
I HATE the fact that handwriting has such a weighting when giving a final judgement. It’s crap.