Why It’s Time To Turn Around GCSE English

Rebecca White

When I first started teaching, my Head of Department made a comment about ‘reinventing the wheel’ and things coming in and out of fashion. I smiled politely, assuming he was one of those jaded teachers I had been warned about, and refused to let it dampen my NQT positivity. Fast forward 20 years and I am staring down the barrel of the same old arguments again and again. This time – the resurrection of ‘The Forgotten Third’ as we start to consider the English curriculum. Is a pale, male and stale curriculum, tethered to the printed page, really fit for purpose anymore? If we had modern texts, shorter questions, the chance to discuss Jekyll & Hyde through the medium of a TikTok video, would it prevent the hamster wheel of retake misery?

Unfortunately, the answer is no – and it will take a very brave soul to change this.

When GCSEs were first developed, they aimed to bridge the gap between prestigious O Level qualifications and the somewhat less revered CSE route. At the heart of their creation was the desire to produce an equitable and accessible system of assessment that was underpinned by meritocratic values and a belief that a criterion-referenced approach was a best fit for all. If you google the history of GCSEs, you will see phrases such as ‘revolutionary change’ and ‘seismic shift’ to describe this attempt to improve standards and opportunities for young people.

These core values have never changed for teachers. We all want our students to leave with the best grades possible – not because it keeps Ofsted and SLT off our backs, but because we know that a good education is still the key to unlocking many doors in the future. Or, at least, it used to be.

When I was younger, my mother told me that if I worked hard at school, I would get good grades and then get a good job. That would lead to a good life. It was a simple sales pitch, made all the more effective by the fact that she was working in some pretty awful jobs to try and get enough money to raise me. And it was true. I did work hard, I did get a good job, I do have a good life. But for many young people, it is hard to believe in that package anymore.

Spend twenty minutes on a young person’s Instagram or TikTok feed and you will see reel after reel of graduates speaking about crippling debts, appalling job prospects, horrendous exam-induced anxiety. With employment opportunities for young people becoming increasingly competitive – current figures suggest that there are almost 50 applications per job in the UK at present – subjects that do not have an immediate and explicit education-to-occupation trajectory are falling by the wayside.

Art and Drama have both suffered massive falls in numbers – almost a 40% decrease in entries for the latter since 2010 – and English is suffering in much the same way. There are almost a third less entries across the English A Level suite this year than there were in 2015. Anecdotally, in 2016, I had 32 students taking A Level English Language. This year, there are 4.

Now, it is easy to blame the flaws in earlier reforms for the downfall in entries. It is easy to say that forcing 16-year-olds to memorise Romantic poetry and nineteenth-century literature was always going to kill their love of reading, but I think there is more to it than that. The brutal truth of the matter is that students are no longer buying what we are selling. Our products – GCSE English Literature and GCSE English Language – no longer suit our target audience.

So, at the risk of being accused of dusting off some old wheel blueprints, I think it might be time to go back to the revolutionary attitudes that started GCSEs in the first place.

Firstly, accessibility. Depending on the exam board, students studying GCSE English Language will encounter nineteenth-century texts either in the form of non-fiction pieces or extracts from fiction texts. They are then assessed on their ability to analyse language, structure, themes and ideas – exactly as they are for GCSE English Literature, which begs the question, why? If the vast majority of students study both Literature and Language (which I absolutely support) why test them on the same things? And why choose some of the most contextually and syntactically challenging texts to test them?

We all know that if something is difficult but seems important, we’ll give it a go. But something that is difficult and feels pointless? It’s pretty difficult to muster up the motivation for that as an adult, let alone as a teenager.

So, instead of testing them on already covered ground, why not go for something that is actually going to make a difference. Rather than requiring students to identify themes or literary devices, wouldn’t it make more sense for us to assess them on their ability to identify bias or manipulative tactics employed by writers? Young people are exposed to far more language than we ever were through their various social media platforms, and not all of it is completely neutral. Equipping students with the skills to see through propaganda and deception has got to be more worthwhile than getting them to comment on the simile which best shows the narrator’s fear and confusion.

Secondly, creativity. The study of English should, in my opinion, produce creative thinkers and communicators. We work with the fundamental building blocks of what it means to be human: telling stories. So why have we created a system that literally crushes the creativity out of this part of the subject?

For many, the fear of retakes has reduced the teaching of original writing to a five-paragraph plan with snappy titles such as ‘zoom in – zoom out – flashback – zoom in again – conclude.’ Students are going into exams with prepared narratives so that they can demonstrate their arbitrary use of a semi-colon in the hopes of gaining enough marks to pass. The huge rise in borderline charlatanic TikTok ‘teachers’ peddling the latest in snake-oil stories means that students are no longer thinking for themselves – they are regurgitating a learned script. And who can blame them when we have created a system that values homogenous regurgitation over creative originality?

Finally, criterion-referencing. The third of students that do not get a grade 4 or above in English at the end of Year 11 are not the ‘Forgotten Third’ – they are the Sacrificial Third. What no-one outside of the education system seems to realise is that this ‘failure’ is built into the system. If two thirds of the cohort got 100% in the exam, the remaining third sitting on 99% would fail. It is that brutal.

Teachers end up trying to guess how many marks struggling candidates will need to pass, restricting students’ opportunities for debate and engagement with a text to ‘three PEEL paragraphs and an overview statement.’ For the candidate that just wants a 4, this cage becomes a security blanket, and they are reluctant to leave it behind for fear of ending up on the rolling retake train.

Until we have a system that allows ALL students to demonstrate that they can meet the threshold for being effective and clear communicators, surely the goal we are all aiming for, we are never going to escape the cycle of retake misery that is afflicting so many young people.

Maybe this is one wheel we could do with discarding completely.

Rebecca White is Head of English at Oriel High School