TEACHERS will be able to be more creative in the classroom if plans to overhaul the Government's flagship literacy strategy get the go ahead, a Horwich headteacher has claimed.

Glenys Evans, who is head of Claypool Primary School, has helped on the working party reviewing the success of the National Literacy Strategy which was introduced in 1998.

Despite a Government report claiming that almost 250,000 seven-year-olds had not reached the required literacy standards, Claypool Primary has consistently achieved higher than average results and won awards for its innovative approach to teaching.

Teaching unions have been outraged that the Ofsted inspectors have blamed weak leadership by some headteachers and shortcomings in the structure of the daily literacy class for the failure to reach targets.

But Mrs Evans argues that the message from the education watchdog is for schools to keep improving their literacy classes and get rid of teaching methods if they are not working.

She said: "We've never felt we were in a strait-jacket at Claypool when teaching the literacy strategy. Teachers need to use both the numeracy and literacy classes creatively and make them exciting for pupils instead of just delivering straight reading, writing and maths classes.

"Ofsted is saying be creative and bring in a buzz element, but don't let standards slip."

Headteacher of Sharples Primary School, Gay Gerrard, said: "The numeracy and literacy strategies have been successful in many schools.

"Reviewing their success and developing on that is not a bad thing.

"For some schools the introduction of the strategies was not so radical anyway, it was just a case of standardising practice."

However, the secretary of the Bolton branch of the National Union of Teachers, Barry Conway, said: "Primary school teachers are overburdened as it is.

"You can't set targets for something like this. Teachers need to spend time teaching and not trying to meet targets."