English and Media Centre co-director, Andrew McCallum, warns against responses to recent curriculum and GCSE changes that potentially risk limiting students’ experience of English at secondary level. The law of unintended consequences finds rich pickings in education, nowhere more so than in teaching English to 11-16 year olds. Policies and initiatives introduced with good intentions…
We invited Dr Emma Smith, Shakespeare scholar at Hertford College, Oxford, to come to talk to a group of teachers in a twilight session at EMC. The idea was to inform ourselves and teachers about current practice in the study of Shakespeare in the academy and to discuss together what the implications of this might…
Barbara Bleiman, Co-Director of The English and Media Centre, clarifies the issues around the de-coupling of AS and AL. The new AS and AL reforms are raising difficult questions about how best they should be implemented. Why? Because not only are different suites of subjects being reformed at different times, resulting in a muddling mix of…
Barbara Bleiman, Co-director at The English and Media Centre, considers interesting areas for debate about English as a subject The blogosphere and twittersphere are both full of impassioned arguments and discussions around education, many of them sustained by English teachers or Headteachers with a background in English teaching. English teachers have always been at the forefront…
EMC has invited some well-known figures in the world of English and Media teaching to give their views on a subject about which they feel strongly by writing us a guest post. These posts will not necessarily represent the views of The English and Media Centre, but promise to be thought-provoking and spark debate. IS…
There’s been a lot of good sense talked in the media in recent days, in response to the DfE’s changes to the Literature requirements for GCSE…and a lot of nonsense too! In our usual style, EMC is keen to set out some of the facts and arguments and set the record straight on some of…
Starting with a look at ‘knowledge’ in relation to Great Expectations, Barbara Bleiman, co-director at The English and Media Centre, explores the debates around knowledge versus skills. Great Expectations 1. Dickens was writing in the 19th century. 2. Pip’s sister was called Mrs Joe Gargery. 3. Dickens wrote his novels in instalments as weekly serials.…
Andrew McCallum, co-director of the English and Media Centre, discusses the draft National Curriculum for KS4. The draft National Curriculum English KS4 programme of study, currently under consultation, is seductive in its brevity and the unexceptional nature of what it proposes. In some ways this makes it hard to argue against. Much in it is…
Kate Oliver, EMC’s KS3&4 consultant, discusses whether schools should ban slang in the classroom. A school in London has recently banned slang from the classroom. Signs have been put up listing banned words, such as ‘coz’ and ‘bare’. The aims are worthy. London MP David Lammy said: ‘I think this is a very good idea. Speaking slang is fine in…
It is currently rumoured that the criteria are about to change again; if they do, then we will update our response. The consultation comes in two parts, one from OFQUAL, giving the overarching structure for all A Levels, with specific sections on each subject. The focus is assessment and its implications. The key element…
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