Concerns have been raised about a decline in young children's fine motor skills as schools increasingly move away from arts education.
According to a survey of teachers, commissioned by art class provider Art-K, fewer children are able to use scissors or grip pencils properly.
Some teachers fear that children will not able to access creative parts of the curriculum as they progress through the school key stages.
A YouGov poll found that 77 per cent of respondents had seen a deterioration in fine motor skills over the last five years.
More than three quarters (76 per cent) agreed that art education is not prioritised in schools, with 18 per cent saying they do not teach art at all in an average week.
Only 12 per cent of said they managed to provide more than 60 minutes of art education weekly, while only 26 per cent believed students are reaching their creative potential.
The majority of respondents to the YouGov survey believed there was a direct relationship between art education, handwriting development and mathematical problem-solving and 81 per cent said better art education would improve the wellbeing of pupils.
Meanwhile, separate research for Save the Children found that most primary school teachers believed the government would miss its target of three in four children being “school ready” by 2028.
The survey, carried out by Teacher Tapp in May, suggests 60% of primary teachers in state schools think the Government should increase access to childcare for low-income families to help meet its target.
In December, Prime Minister Keir Starmer set a target for 75% of five-year-olds in England to be ready to learn when they start school by 2028.
According to the survey, 81 per cent of primary school teachers believe a lack of affordable childcare has negatively impacted children being ready for school.
Ruth Talbot, policy and advocacy adviser at Save the Children, said: "When 80% of teachers are worried that the UK Government won't meet their target on school readiness, we know more needs to be done by ministers to fix this problem.
"Quality childcare that helps children prepare for Reception has been unaffordable and poverty has been allowed to fester for too long.
"Schools are witnessing the dual impact of these issues and it's time for the UK Government to act.
"Without meaningful action, this Government will continue to preside over a rise in poverty while children's outcomes decline."
A Government spokesperson said: "We have made no bones about the scale of the challenge to deliver on our Plan for Change so tens of thousands more children, a record proportion, are school-ready at age five. Our plan is ambitious, and rightly so.
"Already, we have started urgent work to extend early language support, deliver thousands of new places in school-based nurseries, and provide parenting support through the Family Hubs and Start for Life programmes.
"In addition, tens of thousands more working parents across England will soon be able to apply for 30 hours of funded childcare to start from September, boosting access to more affordable and high-quality early years education and childcare.
"This goes hand in hand with the work of our cross-government Child Poverty Taskforce, with its wide-ranging strategy to tackle child poverty across the country to be set out in the summer."
