Malorje Blackman GCSE

In my experience, the SLT who get the jitters about classes doing different texts aren't English specialists.

It's what we keep being told.
As an examiner, I'm always relieved when it's not the same old rote points on the same old texts.

Wow. Bit speechless at that...

Is this really the case?

In the school I've just left we were allowed teacher choice based on preference and challenge. Teachers with lower sets tended to go for ACC and AIC but within the department people chose Frankenstein, LOTF, Jekyll and Hyde. We all went for Macbeth, though I fancy a crack at Romeo and Juliet at some point.

I'm not a middle leader so it's interesting to hear that Ofsted may not like that approach.

We teach in a world in which - apparently - if ofsted cross the corridor from my room to yours, and we're not doing the same thing, ALL HELL WILL BREAK LOOSE.
I've been an examiner a long time. I've been a teacher a long time. But my informed opinion doesn't count because I'm not in charge. Of the 4 texts I have to teach at GCSE, I would only choose one. I have personal and professional reasons but I have to do as I'm told.

Exactly. If the texts are on the list, then schools make a choice as to what to teach. If they wanted to they could teach top set/streams different texts.

(Why do teachers so often have issues with SLT? Are set texts not picked at English Department level? Surely Heads of English were English teachers once? Are schools promoting the wrong teachers, or are the best teachers preferring to teach rather than become HoD? Should schools be structured differently so that experienced teachers get more say even if not HoDs? Or is it all budgets?)

I think it can go the other way in terms of stretch. My DS has just finished Y7. Last year they studied The Importance of Being Earnest, Sassoon, Thomas Hardy's Woodlanders and Pride and Prejudice. I think it was a pretty decent way to turn an 11yo boy off reading.

I agree - if you struggle to read anyway, Shakespeare is no harder than anything else. And the stories are interesting and relevant.

I personally feel that in many ways Shakespeare is far more accessible than e.g. Dickens. Shakespeare wrote plays, so immediately they can be watched and listened to rather than just read. Then they have rattling good plots with interesting twists.

My mid-low ability dyslexic DD was able to enjoy Macbeth at the theatre/cinema and also Much Ado on DVD & at the theatre. But she wouldn't have made it through Great Expectations - Jekyll & Hyde was hard enough.

It disgusts me. But that's not the exam boards' fault. It's the controlling micromanaging weak leaders who insist on it because they don't have confidence in their own skills or those of their staff.

White Teeth ahs been an A Level text. Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's Purple Hibiscus is great. Not sure how that works if they have to be 'British'. Haven't checked that bit of the rubric.

@TeenDivided GCSE has to at least be vaguely accessible to the mid-low ability pupils.

Yes and that is the rationale that is now so frustrating for such as Piggy waspushed and MrsHamlet. There's a ceiling before we even start.

My lowest achieving Year 6 study Shakespeare like my highest. Should I be showing them Gnomeo and Juliet while the rest crack on with Macbeth? Some of the most profound and sensitive comments come from my SEND or low ability children.

Zadie Smith?

I am forced to teach AIC and Macbeth against my better judgement (both as an experienced teacher and examiner) because we all have to teach the same thing.
Back in the day, I taught mockingbird to F tier candidates who did very well - because they were engaged by it and made genuine personal responses. I am heartily sick of being told to teach everyone the same thing from the same shit PowerPoint so they all write the same thing in the exam. Funnily enough, that doesn't get them very good marks.

That's sad. I hate what's been done to English and English Lit. Hate hate :(

Yes I agree about Animal Farm, but some texts studied and some of the ask of the GCSE are just too much for some children. I had a student in my form who was in tears about how hard she found Eng lit, and felt that there should be some other option for her. And others obvs.

I don't think that grey area would happen in MFL tbh - a student gaining top marks in F would have the skills to get a 4 in H - but they might not as they would be overfaced with the level required if that makes sense. They tend to be much more comfortable with the ask of the F paper, which allows them to be confident that they know how to use the past and future tense etc.

@Ashard20 But O level was only studied by 20%.
GCSE has to at least be vaguely accessible to the mid-low ability pupils.

wrong entries

Yes, that was exactly why!

We tried that fro a year but stopped. Lots of us had issues with kids being really insensitive which hadn't happened when we taught it in year 11.

I feel a great sense of loss for this generation that they won't get to know and understand these great works and similar.
It's OK @Ashard20 as I and others have pointed out on this thread, students, even those studying Blackman, will also be studying a Shakespeare play and a 19th century text, plus poems - which in my DCs' case included a range of war poetry. DD wrote her exam essay about Wilfred Owen's Exposure. So all is not lost

The problem with tiers in English specifically clary was the grey area and there were , statistically, a lot of 'wrong' entire where kids were getting top marks in foundation tier or falling off the bottom of Higher - not sure this happens as much in maths of MFL. And they all did the same texts so it really wasn't necessary. To be honest, a really weak kid ca love Animal Farm as much as a top grade student.

@flexiblebenefit I'm with you on this. A great author, but lacking the literary depth. It's all upside down at the moment. The expectation at primary is to cover classic novels. The Railway Children, for example, would be technically more challenging, yet regarded as a children's novel.
On the one hand, yes, we need relevancy and books that address questions and issues - but that is not what an English Literature GCSE is for. It's for understanding and analysing the author's use of language.
For "O" level, I did: Julius Caesar - Shakespeare, The Mill on the Floss- George Eliot, The War Poets - Sassoon and Owen and The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley.
I feel a great sense of loss for this generation that they won't get to know and understand these great works and similar.
I also think that the aspiration should be there to make these texts accessible to teenagers. Those texts were no more relevant to me at fifteen than they would be now to our current teenagers, yet we studied them and took exams in them.
If you compare a Year 6 Reading Sat test with the text of Malorie Blackman and consider that this text is being studied five years later, then you do seriously have to question the depth of study for GCSE.

I don't know whether this is your experience Piggy but ds did quite like OMAM which he did in Year 9. The reason it seems to have been moved to Year 9 was when it came off the syllabus the school already had the books. It seems it is all about resources.

hi @Piggywaspushed that's interesting about tiers. My subject is MFL and the foundation paper is deffo a good thing there as it makes the language GCSE a realistic and achievable goal for a weaker but keen student. The teaching for it is different tho and IMHO (despite what I read on MN) you do need to decide pretty early on who is going for H and who F. Is it issues around that which make you not like tiered papers for Eng lit?

Maybe the answer is to have a specific qualification for the weakest students to take, which includes some literature but stops short of the expectation of grasping a complete Shakespeare play.

Interesting too about AIC, I agree it raises some tricky themes, and also that if everyone does it, that's just dull. In DD's year at her school the teachers chose all their own texts and she did Frankenstein and Animal Farm both of which she loved.

Yes, LOTF is really troubling!

OMAM used to be so loved by kids. It's another one that people are finding more and more difficult in terms of misogyny and race. I think that's a problem with it being moved to years 8/9 as much as anything.