Telford is poised to become a hotbed for future literary talent after the town won a slice of £25 million to improve writing skills among seven and eight-year-olds.

Primary schools in the borough will pilot the Every Child A Writer initiative after Telford & Wrekin was named as one of nine pilot areas across the country.

David Wright, Labour MP for Telford, said: “This is excellent news for Telford.

“I hope we will see a whole generation of children benefiting from this programme and perhaps we’ll develop some budding literary talent.”

He said all the pilot schools will get new teaching materials this term.Ed Balls, Children, Schools and Families Secretary, announced the package at Westminster yesterday.

He said: “I believe we have a historic opportunity to make a crucial breakthrough in raising standards in the three Rs which will make a difference to children throughout their lives.”

The initiative focuses on schools which have the weakest writing results at the end of Key Stage 1.

Under the scheme, a total of 2,500 children in 135 schools will, from this month, receive one-to-one catch-up lessons.

Typically about five or six children in each school would receive tuition from specially-trained teachers.

The programme is to be rolled out across the country by 2011 so that it covers over 45,000 children in up to 9,000 schools in 150 local authorities areas.

Nationwide £169 million will be pumped into the scheme plus the wider Every Child Counts and Every Child A Reader schemes in the next three years.