Children should spend school literacy hour daydreaming with their heads on their desks or lying in the playground staring at the sky, a leading author says.

Cathy Cassidy, who writes best-selling novels for “tweenagers”, says children’s imaginations are being stifled by the curriculum. Instead they need time out doing nothing, to dream up stories.

Schools are obsessed with measurement at the expense of creativity, she said. Many of the 100 emails the author receives each day are from primary-age girls upset and stressed about key stage tests.

Ms Cassidy said: “I can tell you to the day when the Sats tests take place, because I get so many emails.”

Her novel, Scarlett, is on a list from which every Year 7 pupil in the country can pick a free book. The 12 books, by modern authors, cater for a range of tastes and include detective stories, funny poems and a book about “crazy science”.

More than two million books will be given away under the scheme and by its sister programme which gives a free book to every reception-aged pupil. These are run by Booktrust, a charity, and supported with £4 million of Government funding.

Ms Cassidy, a former art teacher and magazine agony aunt, said she was thrilled to be on the list of books for 11-year-olds because it was an important age at which to hook children on reading.

But she said some of her readers were under huge pressure from celebrity culture, bullying, turbulent home lives and particularly school work.

She said: “The level of worry about Sats is something else. When I was at school nothing came close to that. Their levels of anxiety go through the roof.

“Perhaps we’ve lost sight of what education should be about - boosting confidence and making well-rounded characters, developing skills and talents, and using them to pass exams, if they can.”

Ms Cassidy said many of the schools she visited did not do well in league tables but had inspiring teachers and engaging children.

However teachers were forced to follow a narrow curriculum, which meant children did not always discover that reading was “an escape and fun and brought magic into their lives.”

Literacy hour would be better spent daydreaming than sitting quietly looking at a dusty book randomly pulled from the shelf, she said.

“I’d like to cause havoc in schools by encouraging children to daydream, and explain to teachers it’s not a waste of time.

“Pupils could listen to music or put their heads on their desks, lie down on the grass and look at the sky.

“If they let their minds float that’s when exciting, unexpected, random ideas come forward, such as poetry, song lyrics and plays. That is something that would terrify teachers because it couldn’t be measured.”

Ms Cassidy said the way children were educated left no room for “imagination, other ideas or risk-taking”.

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