‘We have killed this subject with the new, terribly boring GCSE’ (p. 48) says one teacher, quoted in Striking the Balance: A review of 11-16 curriculum and assessment in England, just out September 2024 from OCR. The review, based on an extraordinarily wide series of surveys and focus groups and chaired by former Education Secretary Charles Clarke, seeks to address what happens to students from 11-16, Key Stages 3 and 4. Its aim is to influence government policy, including Becky Francis’ wider-ranging review, and shift the whole secondary education infrastructure. Perhaps most of all it represents the most significant listening exercise in recent education history (‘we have been listened to’ said Elizabeth Draper, Deputy Chair of the EA, at the launch event). The report is an impressive, well-put-together and thoughtful document and I hope it will mark a watershed in secondary education in England and Wales. You can read it all online: executive summary pp. 7-12; the specific section on English, pp. 47-60. (Full disclosure, as they say: I get a thank you in the acknowledgements; the working group on GSCE English reform that I chaired, set up by the English Association and University English, is cited in the report; both that group and this report share several recommendations for the subject.
Big picture first, then more on English. The three core ideas are, first, that the curriculum needs to be more ‘contemporary and forward-looking’ (p. 3)– more on digital skills, more on climate change, more on now and what’s to come. Second, that the curriculum needs to build foundational skills at KS 3, especially in maths and English. Finally, that assessment needs to be balanced across 11-16, not bunched into a month in year 11.
As a result of these sensible ideas, the overall recommendations are clear. The review is pro-examinations, ‘objective and authentic measures of a student’s performance’ (p. 14), but, like an understanding GP, points out (repeatedly) that ‘you can have too much of a good thing’ (p. 2, 7, 14). It recommends reducing the assessment burden. Fewer and shorter exams; less content; changes to scheduling and the use of non-exam assessment; more exam aids (open book exams, formula sheets). The review advocates for more national strategy and coherence for digital learning. It also recommends a new mechanism for the ongoing review and evaluation of curriculum and assessment: roughly, the rebirth, phoenix-like, of something like the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, reduced to ashes in the reckless and shortsighted ‘Bonfire of the Quangos’ in 2012.
The report has a lot to say about English. To begin with, everyone involved in the report, from Charles Clarke down, seems startled by how ‘universally unpopular’ (p. 47) the GCSEs in English are. The report’s authors are not to blame for their surprise. It feels like English teachers are rarely listened to. Popular edu-tweeters and influencers, high on cognitive science they only half-understand and full of grand ambitions, dismiss core points made by leaders in our subject as ‘special pleading’ and encourage the ‘lethal mutations of research findings’ which are strangling English. And, although there many great education journalists, most mainstream media stories about English are either wacky—’Boffin proves Shakespeare’s Plays written by Loch Ness Monster’— or negative—‘Kids just not reading these days’ (I note: we’re living in a golden age of YA fiction and teenage creativity; literacy is improving) or (the most annoying, because both very untrue and so damaging) ‘Employers don’t rate English’ (employers are crying out for the skills we teach in communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity).
However, the listening methodology of the report, which paid attention to actual teachers and students, has paid huge dividends. The report has heard teachers when they ‘argue that the content and criteria’ of the GCSEs ‘which must be used by all exam boards’ are not just ‘narrow and uninspiring’ but ‘actually causing harm’. (p. 47). The not-fit-for-purpose GCSEs are putting students off English. This is the root cause of the drop in numbers for A-level and (pay attention, university colleagues) since we know that 14% of A-level students go on to take English as a degree, the GCSEs are the most significant factor in the fall of numbers in HE. The GCSEs are the choke point in our discipline: their urgent reform and improvement is the most important thing we can do to increase student recruitment for English and Creative Writing in all universities.
Striking the Balance summarises many of the unhappinesses teachers and students express: the weight put on assessment and accountability leads to ‘teaching to the test’; there is a heavy and undue emphasis on ‘heritage texts’; writing is understood in a narrow way, excluding creative writing, business writing and (most obviously) digital writing, with no sense of how writing in ‘the real world’ is drafted, edited and redrafted, now with added AI; coursework, or something like it, is much missed, as is spoken language study; the weight of the GCSEs at KS 4 often shapes (misshapes, in fact) KS 3; there is a chronic shortage of qualified English teachers. The report celebrates the UK’s success in literacy – but, really, while literacy almost always falls on the English department, it is not really the English department’s job at KS 4 (very bluntly: literacy is not English).
As a consequence of the report’s core ideas and listening methodology, the recommendations for English are strong and persuasive. A redesign as a matter of urgency. More media, more non-fiction, more film, TV, drama, and digital texts (that is, ‘multi-modal’ texts), a change that NATE among others have been advocating for years now. Increased diversity of literary texts to reflect ‘the range of cultures and experience of all young people’ (p. 60). Restoring spoken language to GCSE and trialling the assessment of speaking and listening using models from ESOL. Of course, the report is open to oracy (and by the time this piece is published, we’ll have the report from the Oracy Commission). Finally, a ‘driving test’-style (i.e. take when ready) qualification to ‘benchmark… English competencies’ at around 14. Perhaps there was more here for the report to drill down into: ideas about disciplinary pedagogy; ideas about knowledge in English and how it differs from, say, knowledge in Maths or Geography; ideas about what the subject is. What might we call these ideas? Something like the deep codes or basic programming of the discipline: this is missing from the report. But this is a minor cavil. The report is properly more concerned with the interface and hardware, not the deep programming, of English.
Striking the Balance has come, as we all know, at a perfect time. The need for reform has been evident for years but the challenges are huge. The relationship between the internal elements of the GCSEs (content, assessment) and their wider context is interwoven in complex and often hard-to-determine ways (like: did anyone actively choose An Inspector Calls, or did it become a juggernaut simply because it ticked so many boxes?). There are so many moving parts of so many different scales, from what books are piled in the English department’s stock cupboard to the decisions of the Treasury.
What will the other exam boards do? In one way, it is as if OCR has kicked off a conversation: but in another, to carry on the sporting metaphor, the whole assessment system is organised so that the awarding bodies are playing on the same side but for different teams. The first one to drop An Inspector Calls risks an own goal as its customers exodus to its rivals. In addition to these challenges, the report is all too aware of the terrible strain, the exhaustion almost, in our education system.
This is why the report asks for ‘evolution not revolution’ (p. 2, 81). But at the same time, the report argues for rapid, almost emergency, change specifically for English. Policymakers are specifically warned, in bold type, that English should be ‘redesigned as a matter of urgency’ and that they ‘should not wait for the conclusion of a full review of all subjects, curriculum and assessment before such a redevelopment’ (p. 60). ‘Urgent evolution’ is a square circle.
Luckily, English is a subject that is especially good with square circles. After all, much poetry is about our contradictory and equivocal hearts, and we know Macbeth is both victim and perpetrator (see? knowledge in English is of a different type from knowledge in maths, where, quite rightly, they can’t abide square circles). The GCSEs are so bad that the people of the discipline, as well as its resources, ideas and institutions need to meet these challenges for reform in order to revivify the subject with new, forward-looking assessments. The OCR review is a pathfinder for this and I thank the authors and OCR for producing it.
Robert Eaglestone is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is also the Deputy Chair of English Association’s Higher Education Committee.
The EA is hosting a sector-wide meeting on GCSE reform on 25 September 2024. Find out more
This article also appears in the Autumn 2024 Newsletter.
