Almost a third of secondary school pupils do not know that Shakespeare was a playwright.
Researchers gave 1,000 pupils a list of 13 names, including Alesha Dixon and Neville Chamberlain, and asked which were playwrights. Seven out of ten managed to pick William Shakespeare from the list.
Grammar school pupils were even less likely to name him: half of 137 chose him from the list compared to three-quarters of non-selective school pupils.
The survey of pupils aged from 11 to 18, conducted by OnePoll, also suggested that almost half had never been to the theatre on a school trip and two-thirds had not appeared in a school play. In independent schools, about three in ten had not been on a theatre trip.
The survey was