The poet laureate delivered a broadside against the school curriculum last night, saying that the government's regime of tests and targets has left students with no time to read books.

Speaking after the announcement that he is to step down as the head of the country's most prestigious creative writing course, at the University of East Anglia, Mr Motion said schools are trapped in a "creative crisis".

He complained that many of the students he came across had never read such classics as Great Expectations, or the works of Austen, Waugh and Greene because the school system treats pupils and teachers like rats in a wheel.

He suggested a list of books that students on his course should have a read.

"There's a real crisis about creativity in general and about reading thanks to the way the curriculum is structured," he said. "It's target-driven and it's exam-driven. This is not the teachers' fault; it's the fault of the pressures put upon them. The amount of time available for creativity is sadly diminished. It's very noticeable. Almost every other academic colleague I've spoken to says the same. We turn out students from schools and into universities who have not been educated in a rounded way. We know what's happened to art and music in schools. It's happening to reading as well."

He said that the students he met at UEA were hungry for literature. But unfortunately their time on the "educational rat wheel" had prevented them exploring the world of books.

Mr Motion has spent eight years leading the UEA creative writing course, whose alumni include Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan.

In September he takes up a new post as chair of creative writing at Royal Holloway, part of London University.

Motion's must-reads:

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Ulysses by James Joyce
Emma by Jane Austen
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Waterland by Graham Swift
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie