Today’s Shropshire children may be at the forefront of technology, but do they know how to write a good old fashioned letter? Rebecca Lawrence reports.

This week is Write a Letter Week, a UK-wide campaign to support children’s handwriting practice.

The aim is to help teachers and parents support the thousands of children – as many as one in five, according to latest research – who leave primary school with below-average skills in reading and writing.

And experts say handwriting is an important and unique skill which is as valuable as ever in this computer age.

Everybody loves receiving post, and a handwritten letter is a touching way to say hello to someone or thank them for their help.

Of course it doesn’t mean children can’t write a letter at any other time of the year, but this is the perfect time to get into the habit.

Shropshire mum Ruth Pracy, of Pontesbury Hill, feels that writing an e-mail is just as important as writing a letter, and says communication has moved on for people of her daughter’s age.

Her 14-year-old daughter Kestra much prefers to e-mail, text or phone people than to put pen to paper.

Mrs Pracy says: “She writes handwritten letters very rarely and does everything electronically. An e-mail is a letter – she does write long scripts to people.

“I think they write just as much as children used to, but it’s just using a different medium. She phones people up and says thank you to them for presents or goes round to see them – that is just as nice, as she is speaking to them.

“I have tried to encourage her to write handwritten letters but she would much rather pick up a phone. She’s much more comfortable with that, and that probably goes for all her friends.

“They are so used to just picking up a phone or checking Facebook or texting – that is the way they communicate with each other.”

Mrs Pracy herself admits she rarely writes a letter, saying: “I’m an e-mail person.”

So what about our schools? Pupils at Pontesbury Primary School have been busy writing letters to the governors. Teacher Yvette McDaniel, who is the school’s literacy co-ordinator, says the skills are very much needed today.

“Our pupils in years five and six have just written letters to our chair of governors highlighting their concern about traffic problems at the end of the school day.

“They have been doing some practical activities on that. We try and make writing as real as possible. I think they enjoyed writing the letters and felt as if they were contributing to the life of the school.”

Yvette says the children are taught to use e-mail at school but do not tend to use it for writing during the school day.

“We encourage the written word more,” she says.

But Yvette acknowledges that e-mailing is also important for children to understand.

“It’s still corresponding and using words. Texting is more of a problem – it’s a whole new language.”

She says there can be great advantages to using the internet for improving children’s writing skills.

“There are blogs for story writing, and children can contribute to the blog and share with other people around the world. They can have people from all over the world make a critique about it.”

Ten-year-old Sophie Foxley, of Bicton Heath in Shrewsbury, is a prime example of someone who has benefited from writing a blog.

The Oxon School pupil was able to keep up with her literacy skills during her treatment for leukaemia by writing an online blog about her daily life. It earned her fans from all over the country, and from overseas.

Her mother Jane Foxley says: “If you write on the computer and make a mistake you can just delete it; it’s harder if you write a letter.

“In a lot of ways it is easier to write on a computer. Writing the blog gave Sophie a lot of opportunities and experience and helped her with her literacy.

“She doesn’t tend to write letters but she sends her thank-you cards via the computer and makes her own cards on the computer. I still write letters a bit, though.”