With a wave of 200,000 primary school leavers across the country set to take part in a rigorous new English test as of next year, teachers at this level are to be asked to take a grammar course to make sure they can prepare their pupils adequately. 

According to many experts, there is a knowledge gap in English schools when it comes to grammar, with many graduate teachers not being all that sure when it comes to distinguishing their conjunctions from their prepositions.  

Research by University College London found that more than half of undergraduates have problems with grammar to the extent that they can not distinguish between these types of words and an adjective, for example. 

Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, believes the new special course that helps teachers brush up on their grammar will be a positive. “If teachers have to teach a subject and they don’t know it themselves then they are going to struggle," he said. 

Mr McGovern said that one of the main problems has been the rise of computer software in the last couple of decades, with many teachers who have graduated from challenging degree courses even struggling with grammar because they can lean on spelling and grammar checks on computers. 

However, Government adviser Richard Hudson, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at University College London, who carried out the research that led to the creation of the new grammar course, said that the real reason is that many teachers have never been properly educated on grammar themselves. 

He said that many schools across the UK abandoned the teaching of the subject as long ago as the 1960s, meaning we now have a generation of teachers who have never encountered such lessons themselves.