Heads of Department with long memories may recall a survey conducted by the Council for College and University English in 1997 on which the report ‘The English Curriculum: Diversity and Standards’ was based. This report was prepared with the aim of establishing the relationship between curricular diversity and standards, and to consider the community’s perceptions of what constituted core graduate attributes in English.
When the English Subject Centre was established it was charged with continuing the collection of data on the English curriculum and teaching. Five years after the ‘Diversity and Standards’ report, years which have seen substantial change in UK higher education, the English Subject Centre is updating the report so that the community has current and comprehensive information about how English is taught and the issues faced by departments.
The English Subject Centre distributed a questionnaire entitled ‘Survey of the English Curriculum and Teaching in UK Higher Education’ to all Heads of Department in August. The questionnaire seeks information about staff, students, resources, methods of teaching and assessment and course content, coverage and aims. Much of the information requested is specific or quantitative, but we also solicit comment on these and other topics.
The questionnaire is comprehensive and therefore quite lengthy, but we hope that this will result in a report that will be of use to all departments in benchmarking against a national standard and identifying the major issues for the subject. The English Subject Centre collaborated with the European Society for the Study of English to include their data requirements and hence avoid the need for a separate survey.
The survey data will be analysed in the autumn and published before Christmas. Copies of the report will be distributed to all departments and available on our website.
