1. Exam boards for English Literature should reduce the level of prescription in their specifications.

1. Exam boards for English Literatureshould reduce the level of prescription in their specifications. Research shows* that there is anin built distrust of the process of canonisation manifested in interviews withsubject leaders. Examiners feel that teachers should be able to have morefreedom to choose what they teach – as long as there is a variety of text typesand forms – and that English Literature GCSE and A Level should be developingskills of analysis and critical enquiry rather than learning about literaryheritage texts.

Subjectleaders of English feel restricted by the politics surrounding the teaching ofEnglish (see item #3) and when selecting texts for their prescribed lists, theyworry about being criticized for making inappropriate choices (that are not difficultenough or potentially offensive). What they think students will engage with isnot their primary concern.

Similarlyin schools, many teachers, when choosing what to teach their GCSE students –think more about time constraints and ease of teaching than selecting a textthat they feel their students will identify with. More than 90% of students inthis country do Steinbeck’s Of Mice andMen at GCSE. While I agree that this book is engaging and carries important themes and messages thatstudents connect with, the main reason it has achieved primacy is because it iseasy to teach, there are plenty of resources available in schools to teach itand it is the shortest book on a list of just four books. (Of Mice and Men comes in at 128 pages compared to 336, 320 and 240pages in the other books). The format of assessment is open book examinationwhere students are expected to select quotes in response to a question which befocused on character or theme. Of Miceand Men has six clearly defined chapters some of which focus on a specificcharacter or issue and a cyclical narrative with clear links between the openingscene and final scene, making it easy for students to find relevant quotationfor their responses. When preparing 15 and 16 year olds for a timed conditionsterminal examination, teachers are afraid to take risks. Exam results havebecome the primary focus for English departments and teachers no longer feelable to experiment with teaching new texts. The irony is, however, that as aresult we have inadvertently made Of Miceand Men a disproportionately dominant text.

We’vebeen using the mantra “no need to reinvent the wheel” for too long. It is timefor English teachers to get inventive, to start seeking out alternative booksto Of Mice and Men for our studentsto study. I acknowledge these practical considerations and if a short book isessential for your students, find another book under 100 pages. There areplenty out there.

EnglishLiterature would do well to look Media and Film Studies as a template of how toassess students without having to prescribe texts. WJEC and OCR, the two mostpopular boards for Film and Media Studies do not have prescriptive lists andthey still manage to assess students through terminal examination. Studentsshould be being assessed on skills and not knowledge of specific objects ofstudy.


* Click here to read the full research document