Exclusive: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for spelling and literacy improvement to be a national priority for parents and children and says the issue will be a key pillar of his next term of government.

Mr Morrison and his wife Jenny sat down with News Corp Australia at home in Kirribilli House to speak about spelling and literacy standards as he encouraged all schools and families to join the new, upcoming Kids News Spelling Bee and the benefits of non-fiction literacy resources for children such as kidsnews.com.au.

The Morrisons started fostering a love of reading with girls Abbey, 11, and Lily, 9, from when they were babies and the couple believe it has made all the difference.

“I think it is really important because if you expose kids to books really early on they get a love of reading and I think that really helps with their spelling,” Mrs Morrison said.

The Prime Minister said reading was “something much bigger” than a story.

“Reading is also about comprehension it is also about understanding; it’s about having that insight into being able to comprehend circumstances, scenarios, situations,” Mr Morrison said.

The pair acknowledged many families were under huge time pressures and prioritising reading and spelling was not always easy.

“Sometimes as a mum, as a dad you are running around like crazy … but if you can just read one book (a night) … it just makes such a difference,” Mrs Morrison said.

Mr Morrison added: “That’s why so many other policy areas are so important to be able to enable families to spend more time (reading and spelling with their kids)”.

The Morrisons urged all schools and families to get involved with the Kids News Spelling Bee.

“These things (spelling) don’t have to be a chore — they can be fun. And kids are competitive, particularly with their parents too,” Mr Morrison said.

He said non-fiction literacy options like kidsnews.com.au, which writes appropriate and relevant daily news for children in a safe, educationalenvironment, were great not only for boosting academic outcomes but teaching children about the importance of quality news.

“This is what I think Kids News can help with. One of the things we want to teach kids about being online is to challenge and not accept things just as fact,” Mr Morrison said.

“We recognise the vital role of communities in literacy skills. That is why we are supporting families, carers and communities with free literacy advice and reading programs targeted to the needs of children learning to read.”

The Kids News Spelling Bee will be the biggest of its kind in Australia.

This free event will be open to all Australian schools for students from Grades 3 to Year 8. It will launch in the second half of this year.

The Kids News Spelling Bee will feature school-level competitions to determine class and school champions. Names of every school winner will be published in News Corp papers around Australia.

Kids News publisher Toni Hetherington said the spelling bee was a quality addition to kidsnews.com.au, which improves children’s literacy through daily, relevant news articles in child-appropriate language on a safe, isolated site.

“We are working with teachers on the ideal format for the spelling bee and know it will be a fun way to boost students’ love of words,” she said.

Kidsnews.com.au has doubled its national traffic in the past 12 months to almost 1 million page views per month. Students are spending more than 2500 hours reading its content each week.

News Corp Australia’s Community Ambassador Penny Fowler said: “The Kids News Spelling Bee makes me immensely proud, as it means our News in the Community program is delivering on our commitment to invest in educating the next generation and improving children’s literacy.”

To register your interest in the Kids News Spelling Bee, go to kidsnews.com.au/spelling-bee