THE traditional clockface seems to be out of favour with children learning to tell the time, according to a new survey.

The survey by Flik Flak, a children's watch manufacturer, found that 28% of children in the West Midlands aged between four and eight cannot tell the time by looking at a watch or clock.

More worryingly, 45% of children in the West Midlands do not know how many hours there are in a day.

So despite time-telling being a key part of the Government's National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) for primary schools, it seems that teachers and parents are struggling to teach children how to tell the time.

Psychologist Professor Cary Cooper, said: "The results suggest that the digital age is making it increasingly more difficult for children to understand and learn about the basic concepts of time.

"It's not easy for children to understand the relationship between hours and minutes if they are using digital displays and mobile phones to tell the time.

"Parents, therefore, need to help teachers out by encouraging their children to use an analogue watch or clock to tell the time."

This is something that Sally Martin, deputy head teacher at Pinvin First School agrees with.

She said: "As a mother of four children, parents should be reinforcing time telling as they certainly have that responsibility.

"It's a bit worrying really and I wouldn't say it was true of children at our school.

"I think some children aren't exposed to the clock face enough but every classroom in our school has an analogue clock.

"I suspect there are probably a few houses without a clock face."

She said there had been occasions where she had to teach seven-year-olds from scratch and that children tended to get confused when they were taught half-pasts and quarter pasts.

Norma Dobie, formerly a deputy head teacher at Flyford Flavell First School, said the Government's Numeracy Hour, a policy for children to be taught the time using analogue and digital clocks for an hour a day, ought to be addressing the problem.

"I would say this survey is worrying and it is something the National Numeracy Hour will be addressing," she said. "All primary schools have to follow this as it is part of the National Curriculum for numeracy.

"Time has always been quite difficult to teach. The passing of time isn't something that they can see but it's something they can learn with maturity. It's something they've got to learn."

"We start off teaching analogue to give them more of an idea of the passage of time.

"As children grow up they are going to be looking at digital time more than analogue."

She said that when she taught, it was the girls who had a better grasp of time than boys, as they tended to wear analogue watches.

"Most children came to school wearing digital watches, and I have to say it was mostly boys who wore them," she said.