Barbara Bleiman is Deputy
Director of the English and
Media Centre, a not-for-profit
educational publisher, CPD
provider and teachers’ centre
for secondary English and
Media. She has written many
publications and articles on
A-Levels, including the
forthcoming publication,
Introducing the Gothic.
She has worked with the
English Subject Centre on a
number of projects.
In 2006, Lucy Webster and I wrote a report for the English Subject Centre on the new A Levels that had been introduced in 2000, giving an overview of the kinds of experiences that students might have had before transforming themselves after gap years or beach holidays into English undergrads. Just eight years after the introduction of Curriculum 2000, there has been another major revision of the A-Level curriculum and, as the first year concluded a few months ago, with an AS cohort having just sat their exams, here’s an early update on what’s changed and how it’s being received. This is not a thorough survey of the new specifications, nor is it a detailed analysis of the impact. Rather, it is an early and fairly impressionistic account, drawing attention to some major shifts, some initial indications of the impact and some aspects that colleagues in higher education might either deplore or delight in when their first new cohort appear in a year’s time. It draws on comments from a range of highly experienced teachers who responded to an e-mailed request from me for first thoughts at the end of the first year. It focusses predominantly on Literature but with some brief comments on Language and Lang/Lit at the end.
First, here’s a brief overview of some of the major changes in the English literature specifications.
1. As with all the English subjects at A Level, there has been a reduction from six modules to four. As a result, there are likely to be fewer early exam entries in the AS year and a slight disincentive to do a lot of retaking, since modules often involve substantially more texts.
2. Internal assessment has become compulsory, with an increased maximum weighting of 40% across the whole A Level. (All of the Literature specifications have taken up this full weighting.) The background to this is that, in setting the criteria for the new A Levels in English, QCA said that it had to be either compulsory or removed altogether. A case needed to be made that key aspects of the subject could only be fulfilled through internal assessment. In the event, it was felt that it was important enough to retain – to allow independent research, training in research methodologies and academic essay – writing practices and more extended work across a broader range of texts – even if it meant that some teachers would have to tackle it, somewhat reluctantly, for the first time.
3. There is much more reading. There was a sense that in the old specifications set texts had taken on a disproportionately important role, being read in isolation and in enormous depth, but sometimes as the only example of the genre and the only text in an exam. Now, across AS and A2, there is a requirement to study at least two texts from each of the major genres of poetry, prose and drama, with a minimum of 12 texts being studied in all, rather than the minimum six of the 2,000 specifications. (For Lang/Lit the number of texts is six, as compared with the previous three.) There is also a wider range of texts being studied: the requirements for Shakespeare, a 1300–1800 text, study across all three genres and so on still hold true, but, in addition, there is a new requirement for a post-1990 text, which has brought all sorts of new texts into the frame, from Carol Ann Duffy’s Rapture and Owen Sheer’s Skirrid Hill to Vernon God Little, The Penelopiad or Life of Pi. Some texts in translation are now possible, with interesting combinations such as the study of King Lear and Oedipus Rex or A Doll’s House alongside Victorian fiction and poetry. In some specifications, critical or cultural material can also count as a text.
4. With so many more texts and one of the Assessment Objectives (AOs) focussing on comparing and linking texts, some specifications have become very strongly (perhaps even overly) comparative in their approach. The extent of this depends on how they have chosen to allocate texts within modules. Some specifications still retain a focus on single texts within exams, while saving comparative work for the more leisurely study possible within internal assessment. Others require comparison of unseen texts with independent reading in exam conditions or comparison of several texts in a single answer (e.g. an aspect of three narrative texts compared or three Gothic or Pastoral texts compared).
5. There are much greater opportunities for independent study and independent reading. Teachers are being exhorted by examiners not to teach the same books to all students for internal assessment but instead to encourage students to make their own selections of texts and many are embracing this new requirement enthusiastically.
6. There is general encouragement for a more conceptual approach to the teaching, with students being expected to develop a ’toolkit’ for the study of literature. An example of this is in the study of narrative texts, where students are expected to develop a more sophisticated understanding of narrative technique (voice, point of view, structure, use of time and so on) by looking at more than one narrative. This stepping back and understanding the text in relation to others was often marginalised previously by the intense and detailed focus on a single text.
7. AOs in the 2000 specifications had developed in rather unexpected ways. The intention had been to make explicit the skills and understandings of literary study, but an unwelcome side effect was the atomised assessment that followed, where students were awarded 2.5% for this objective and 5% for that. Some examiners, teachers and students became AO obsessed, marking student work with AOs all the way down the margin of essays and losing touch with the holistic common sense view of what was good writing. Now the AOs have been rationalised, with only four per subject (for Lang/Lit there had been seven). Some Awarding Bodies are now marking the AOs equally across a whole module, rather than marking one essay for one and another essay for another. This seems to be having the effect of putting them in their proper place, as a way of revealing underlying skills and knowledge but examining them as they interrelate in situ, rather than trying to pick them apart.
8. There are welcome new opportunities for responding to texts in creative ways, following similar developments in many higher education literature courses. Internal assessment in most of the specifications allows for at least one piece of writing that is a text transformation, a recreative piece, an imitative piece or a piece of writing that draws on independent reading or style models for writing.
9. In many of the specifications there is greater clarity about what is meant by ’alternative interpretations by other readers’, with more encouragement for students to engage constructively with critical material, whether it be critics writing about a set text or applying critical positions to a text. In one specification, the application of critical material to the study of a text is one compulsory element in internal assessment. In another, critical material constitutes one set text. Most of the specifications reward judicious use of critical material in essays.
These overarching points might imply uniform change but they express broad trends and in fact there remain substantial differences between specifications and a student’s experience of literary study might be quite different depending on which one their school has chosen.
A student who has followed AQA B, for instance, is likely to have a strong sense of genre (with units on narrative, tragedy the Gothic or pastoral) and have been encouraged to have an explicit focus on critical approaches through their A2 internal assessment. A student following the AQA A course will have spent their whole AS year looking at a theme chosen from Victorian Literature, World War 1 Literature and the Struggle for Identity in Modern Literature, with a strong emphasis on independent wider reading. WJEC students will have undertaken a lot of comparative work in their exams and will have had the chance to do extensive independent reading in preparation for their own writing in a chosen literary genre. There are lots of subtle nuances and variations of this kind from specification to specification.
What teachers said
What have teachers and students made of these changes? As indicated, it depends very much on the specification and the teachers. Broadly speaking, however, the response from the teachers I have come across and consulted has been positive, with teachers reporting greater enthusiasm from students and a surprising willingness to read more, and read more independently. (Complaints that their students ’just aren’t keen readers’ have been noticeably fewer!) This hasn’t been without its costs. Some teachers have felt that the time spent in reading more has detracted from the space for in-depth development of thinking, particularly with specifications that have chosen to put the extra texts largely into examined units, or produced ’over-complicated’ questions – ’So much material, so little time. Very short essays can feel like dumbing down,’ said one teacher. Where extra texts are read and studied for internal assessment, this seems to be regarded as a more positive experience. ’Challenging but thorough’ is one comment, and the same teacher, from an inner city sixth form college said, ’The course (with its emphasis on critical texts too) is excellent preparation for an English university course.’ One teacher at a grammar school in the east of England said, ’there has been a considerable increase in intellectual challenge as a result of the emphasis on narrative and genre and the need to make connections between texts. What has been particularly enjoyable is the freedom from the burden of external assessment imposed by three units at AS – we have genuinely had time to explore, follow up interesting tangents and give both students and texts the space to breathe.’ Several teachers commented on the fact that having more internal assessment made it worth giving it its proper time and attention, although responses were influenced by the specification, with some feeling that a particular Awarding Body’s angle wasn’t entirely helpful.
Some of the teachers I approached felt that the new courses made more demands on students and therefore ’enlarged the gulf between the weak and the strong’, but this feeling definitely wasn’t shared by all. For some, despite not yet having taught A2, the loss of a final synoptic exam paper felt troubling, perhaps because they felt that it had had the effect of pulling together all the strands of the course into an all-embracing final exam. The whole of A2 is supposed to be synoptic, so it may well be that by the time they have taught the whole two years these teachers will feel a bit differently about this issue. As is often the case, the variables of choice of spec, nature of cohort and other factors all contributed to teachers taking radically different views on the same issue! For example, the opportunity for creative and recreative approaches was hugely appreciated by some: ’The students loved the recreative coursework (including the commentary) and enjoyed the ’independent learning’ opportunities that led to some strong presentations of their chosen texts’, while another complained that the ’recreative writing remains rather baffling’.
While recognising the greater challenge of the new A Level in Literature, one teacher in an inner-city sixth form college mourned the loss of the Advanced Extension Award (AEA), which provided space for freer, more challenging and wide-ranging study and where ’students frequently exited the exam smiling and saying how much they had enjoyed it.’ She comments that the Extended Project is a possible alternative but fulfils slightly different functions and is not a replacement for AEA, though valuable in its own right.
Lang/Lit
A much smaller sample of teachers responded to my request for comments, so this is a much more limited view, somewhat coloured, as with the Literature, by people’s changes of Awarding Body and specification. Sometimes they comment that they preferred the previous spec, because of the Awarding Body’s styles of questioning or levels of support. They are not necessarily comparing like with like. By and large, however, it seems that rather less has changed in Lang/Lit courses. One teacher commented, ’the first-year course is greatly improved and more naturally integrated’. As with Literature, there has been an increase in the number of texts (literary and non-literary) and an opportunity to develop reading habits in students. One teacher said, ’Students have risen to this challenge and the idea of reading has become buzzy around the department.’ Nevertheless, the same teacher and one other raised slight concerns about the ’skimpiness’ of the literary content compared with the new enlarged Literature course. She said that for students going on to do Literature courses in higher education they have to do a lot of independent reading between AS and A2 to prepare themselves to make a convincing application. Greater weighting for internal assessment means that ’proper time is being given to preparing for this so that students are fully able to learn through doing it, which is good degree preparation.’
Language
With teachers changing specifications, sometimes they are comparing an old spec with a new one from the same Awarding Body, sometimes an old spec from one Awarding Body with a new one from a different one. This makes comparison complicated. Nevertheless, some broad ideas emerge.
The new four-module structure has generally been welcomed. One respondent commented that the changes are less obvious than in Literature but ’more subtle and profound’. A teacher and examiner, she talked about the greater rigour in her spec of personal investigations being focussed on representation in texts rather than general analysis and writing. Her worries about internal assessment being offered in both years proved unfounded. This has ’allowed the students to find their own linguistic interests sooner, which has been very beneficial in engaging and motivating them’. Another teacher echoed these fears about extra internal assessment and her surprise at how it had allowed even less able students to produce ’quality original writing and commentaries’ in AS. Another teacher also commented on the benefits of the internal assessment – ’a very welcome opportunity for creativity, which students and teachers continue to enjoy’. For his specification there were pluses and minuses across other units – more knowledge base in the fixed sociolinguistic topics set in one paper but a loss of data analysis experience in another. One teacher, quoted above, bemoaned the loss of an examined discursive essay demonstrating knowledge of language including both theories and research. She also worried that exemplar material from the board suggested a lower requirement for linguistic precision and understanding than she would have expected.
Final comments
When Curriculum 2000 was introduced and new teaching patterns were established, it quickly became clear that several unexpected and unwelcome aspects had emerged as a by-product of well-intentioned changes. In particular, the over emphasis on AOs brought too much ’teaching to’ the objectives and a highly pragmatic, some might say cynical, approach from students who wanted to be told exactly how to score high marks. Colleagues in higher education complained about students’ lack of interest in learning for its own sake. Equally, it seemed as if independent study had been down graded, with few opportunities for students to pursue the kind of open research that would prepare them for academic study in higher education. And the complaints from teachers and academics about students who didn’t have any enthusiasm for reading came thick and fast. Whatever surprises emerge as the 2008 specifications bed down, these areas of concern do seem to have been addressed. I am optimistic that in two or three years’ time more students will be arriving at university with a greater willingness to take their own initiative. They will have a stronger sense of enquiry and more confidence. They will take greater pleasure in reading books. If the early signs prove true and teachers seize the opportunities offered, the A Levels of 2008 could be a significant moment of change.
