According to a story at the Guardian, England’s education secretary, Michael Gove will soon announce plans to overhaul the English curriculum in primary schools. Under his plans, students will be required to learn and recite poetry. The teaching of English at primary school, he said, will become “far more rigorous” than it is now.

Starting at age five, students will be read poems by their teachers and will be asked to memorize and practice reciting simple poems—in their second year of school, students will continue “to build up a repertoire of poems learnt by heart,” according to Gove’s imminent announcement. Under Gove’s provisions, schools will make a stronger emphasis on reading for pleasure by early familiarization of students with traditional stories and fairy tales.

The education secretary also plans to make foreign language learning a compulsory study beginning at age seven for students.

Read more at the Guardian.