Malorje Blackman GCSE

On a diverse authors note, fairly sure one exam board has added Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie which is a great shout. Sadly, schools just keep on sticking to the same old same old.

Thank you, that was interesting.

DD1 did LotF under the old spec. Personally I find it really disturbing.
DD1 also did OMAM, and DD2 did OMAM in y9 which was OK but she found it bit confusing as she didn't really grasp the background.

DS2 did Blood Brothers at GCSE which I think is very simple and again hammers home its context. I was a bit hmmm about that in your vein OP, but he did other stuff, too, to push him. He loved A Christmas Carol and Macbeth, read Animal Farm in Year 9 lessons and adored it, read Lord of the Flies himself , and To Kill A Mockingbird and Frankenstein.Keep your DD reading at home. I hate that reading for pleasure is such a rarity these days. It's all about 'skills of analysis'. Whatever happens, the joy will be squeezed out, unless the teacher is a bit rogue!

AIC is great in the theatre though, and - unlike Great Expectations!- DS1 did like it.

Sure thing. It's become the default text of choice (for AQA , this has relegated other texts, such as Lord of the Flies, to almost oblivion). Kids tend to provide paint by numbers responses form various tutor websites and books. And parrot out barely understood stuff about class and patriarchy. I'd guess the context of Blackman would actually be more applied and genuinely appreciated. Paint by numbers is not stretch and challenge , as a PP said.

It's done by something like 85% of candidates. if I wanted to stand out, I'd do something else.

The problematical stuff arises from issues surrounding rape and discussions of suicide and how far our sympathies are meant to extend to Eric, for example. It's of its time but some teenagers respond in an increasingly negative way to the issues presented - both in the 'oh my God, did s/he just say that out loud?' kind of way, and in the sense of being triggered. I don't teach it - not because of this but because I got bored to the back teeth of them not getting the ending. And I prefer Animal Farm, which students tend to love.

Gove got rid of Of Mice and Men , allegedly because of its ubiquity - but it seems AIC is allowed its monopoly!

Just to pick up on tiers , they were a nightmare in English and I am glad they are gone.

I don't like schools, that make entire year groups do the same text.
Happily, at my school, teachers choose from within the spec. There is no evidence that classes doing AIC get better results than classes doing the prose, or more contemporary texts (eg DNA).

DS1's teacher chose Great Expectations at GCSE instead of A Christmas Carol. I did question this and was told 'better grades because stretch and challenge'. Hmmm... I love ACC and thinks its politics are very relevant and satisfying even now. They all hated it, most didn't read all of it, and the grades for that particular unit weren't great.

Could you expand on this please? Just for general interest.

DD was due to do AIC and we saw it at the theatre in preparation, but then we got the pandemic and DD didn't get to do it.

OP, doing An Inspector Calls at GCSE will not bring diversity to the workplace.

Personally , I don't think that's a left wing tangent....

The OP's DD will still do a Classic writer. The 20thcentury is on top of eg Dickens.

The world and its wife do AIC at GCSE. Your DD would not stand out from a huge crowd. It's quite a problematical text and a LOT of English teachers want rid of it.

I did Macbeth, P&P and poems by Tennyson for O level.

The 'G' in GCSE stands for General. I actually think the cross-subject curricular is far better these days than when I was at school. At my 'top indie' I couldn't even do all 3 sciences so had to stop biology aged 13!

I think the English subject curriculum possibly does more hard than good wrt getting kids generally enjoying literature. Maybe more Malorie Blackman is just what it needs.

These books certainly help with high grades because they are too easy for some. We did Silas Marner for O level. Also Macbeth. Not many got the top grades back then! We also studied Chaucer. O level was more like A level now. Other DC did CSE.

This is a very basic and not particularly educated view on how English Literature study works. It’s not about the ‘difficulty’ of the text. English Literature lessons are not simple reading comprehension sessions. You can do a degree in English Lit degree and complete a dissertation on a set of children’s books if you wanted, it’s about what you get out of the text, your interpretations, and critical thinking around the themes.
Incidentally, you can teach MacBeth at primary level. You can also study it for a Master’s degree. Obviously the teaching, learning and the response will be different - but the text is same.
Having read Silas Marner and Chaucer does not give you the edge over someone who has read ‘Naughts and Crosses.’ You could read Chaucer, understand it well and still write a very bland essay on its basic themes - while someone could read Blackman and come up with engaging and original explorations and responses to her writing. That’s what distinguishes the ‘brighter DCs’ as you like to call them.

@TizerorFizz We read the exact same books as you. Chaucer was a A'Level though. We also read Murder In the Cathedral by T.S Eliott.

1. O level was only taken by 20% of the student body, GCSEs are designed for all students.
2. Given that grades have returned to being given on a curve the easyness of the books doesn't impact the % of higher grades
3. Schools don't have to teach the same books for 3 years. If brighter DC aren't studying more variety in y7-y9 that is on the school not the exams. DD didn't start set texts until y10, and they spent around 1 term per text.
4. Pupils can always read ore books in their own time if they or their parents want to.
5. GCSEs are really not narrow or unchallenging. The very brightest may find them easy, but that is what A levels and Degrees and extra curricular interests fill.

These books certainly help with high grades because they are too easy for some. We did Silas Marner for O level. Also Macbeth. Not many got the top grades back then! We also studied Chaucer. O level was more like A level now. Other DC did CSE.

I don’t know why we cannot admit some DC are brighter than others and need more challenge. Not reading the same texts for 3 years should be required and breadth of literature is important. It doesn’t have to be classic literature but, judging by the CVs DH receives from grads, good English isn’t very highly valued. It’s possible to get good grades without having having a good education. A narrow unchallenging education gets the grades and then DC are considered bright. Not sure they all are?!

I think it sounds like a great step OP.

GCSEs need to be accessible for even below average students. Especially in English and maths.

But you also want it to be engaging. Adding more books like this will hopefully keep students more interested which I imagine would help them grade and revision wise!

This has annoyed me for years! Granted, I did O level and we only had 3 texts but we didn't start them until the 2nd half of the summer term of year 10.

Before that we read Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Lord of the Flies, lots of weird short stories (it was the late 70s!), Great Expectations (didn't read all of it - the teacher summarised bits and we skipped ahead), as well as some of the war poets and a bit of Chaucer's Prologue. I wasn't keen on most of them but at least I wasn't going over and over them.

I would have loved to have done something like Malorie Blackman - far more interesting and relatable as would many of my classmates (I was set 4 out of 12 at a fairly good comprehensive).

I kind of see what you mean. Her stories are amazing, great characters and she’s a decent writer but not exactly brilliant in terms of dialogue and general language and prose. It’s hard to strike a balance though. Great language and prose doesn’t equate a great and engaging book. Many classics are over-rated I think because they sound ‘flowery’ but actually are understandably very dull for the majority of teenagers to read and hard for them to relate to.

I know cost of texts was an issue. Dd's English teacher told them that top set were going to study Pride & Prejudice & Inspector Calls and lower set Christmas Carol & Blood Brothers but they all ended up doing Christmas Carol because they couldn't afford to buy new books.

DD's teacher told them that their year 10 unit on autobiography was the only opportunity they had to study something that wasn't by a dead white male. I checked the exam board syllabus, and that wasn't true. Although the exam boards do try to diversify the syllabus a bit, schools do tend to stick with the same tried-and-tested texts, year in, year out. Part of it is that there are plenty of resources available. I wonder if there's also a copyright issue, given that DD's school did not require them to have copies of the texts.

What would help is if they didn't spent 2 years (in some cases 3), studying the same very few works absolutely to death. I've tutored pupils who've started reading the book in Year 9, and never moved on from it. Of course they hate it (whichever book it is!), particularly the low achievers who aren't really understanding it that well anyway.

Tiered exams is a possibility; also different sets where the books are chosen differently perhaps.

OP Plenty of bog standard comprehensives study An Inspector Calls as well as your nephew's grammar school FWIW. It's a great play and I love it but it is by a dead white man (I'll forgive him because he is a leftie) like so much studied in Eng Lit, sadly. I absolutely reject the idea that grammar and private schools will choose more literary texts - nor should they if that means only Dickens and Priestley.

Your DD will also study Shakespeare and a 19th century text like some literary Dickens alongside a poetry anthology and will have to talk about unseen poems as well. So all is not lost. Some of the poems will be modern but many will be old as well.

I don't think that older texts are the only ones that are literary and I am sure you don't either, but it does come across a bit that way.

DD took Eng lit to degree level and only then did she study anything by someone living and non white (tho Anita and Me is also on the GCSE list). It;s a shame and can't be helpful in encouraging non-white female students when they don't see themselves in the books they are reading and studying.

Yes, Sign of Four is on the 19th century list. I imagine the idea is to appeal to boys who may not enjoy Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte. In fact most schools choose Christmas Carol as the shortest and most accessible text. DD at least did Frankenstein (by a woman! yay!).

Can you tell I feel strongly about this? I very much agree with PPs saying that Eng lit should be tiered (as should Eng lang) and then perhaps we could have two different lists of textx, with maybe excerpts of Shakespeare at foundation, and some more accessible novels from the last 100 years.

Oh hang on, still on AQA. Dammit.

Looks like they’ve taken The Sign of Four off then. Thank goodness.