An inspector calls - does the suicide victim lack agency with her relationships with Eric and Gerald?

Sadly, I’d agree with this. I’ve had some trainee teachers under me whose knowledge of the subject in general was abysmal. Unfortunately, until other areas are tackled we’re going to continue getting candidates who are under par and too many experienced staff leaving. Some of the exam responses also strongly suggest that some staff are teaching from YouTube and have woefully misunderstood the plays.

Yes 100% I'm hoping the Curriculum and Assesment Review works to change this - the intermin report alluded to it. Yes I do feel that we must change that, I know so many children who have never studied another playwright than Shakespeare (espeically if they do a book not a play in Paper 2). I do feel that's fundamentally ridiculous when we know we could teach them the skills about plays, analysis of techniques with other playwrights. Also as someone who did Othello in 6th form, it's so difficult to fo that in Y7 even with the best will in the world, you can't say that's an accessible text. In fairness I have seen some schools that somehow bypass this, I'm not sure if it's about being LA or MAT but I know my 6th form (different school to my secondary) only did 1 Shakespeare across all of KS3. I love Shakespeare but I feel we can recognise that there are so many amazing plays we could study in KS3 which are diverse and accessible and that even if you want to do older playwrights we could do Marlowe (which students learn more about in history doing Elizabethan England) than English, we could do so many others.

Yes 100% I'm hoping the Curriculum and Assesment Review works to change this - the intermin report alluded to it. Yes I do feel that we must change that, I know so many children who have never studied another playwright than Shakespeare (espeically if they do a book not a play in Paper 2). I do feel that's fundamentally ridiculous when we know we could teach them the skills about plays, analysis of techniques with other playwrights. Also as someone who did Othello in 6th form, it's so difficult to fo that in Y7 even with the best will in the world, you can't say that's an accessible text. In fairness I have seen some schools that somehow bypass this, I'm not sure if it's about being LA or MAT but I know my 6th form (different school to my secondary) only did 1 Shakespeare across all of KS3. I love Shakespeare but I feel we can recognise that there are so many amazing plays we could study in KS3 which are diverse and accessible and that even if you want to do older playwrights we could do Marlowe (which students learn more about in history doing Elizabethan England) than English, we could do so many others.

That's interesting, I was recently working on adding some texts to A-level spec and two of the ones added are Brotherless Night (amazing book about Sri Lanka, the civil war, Tamil Tigers and love of communities and family). Another one is called The Island of Missing Trees which is about a relationship between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot in 1970s Cyprus which I think is a good example of a book showing complex relationships in the setting of an ethnic conflict. And another one is Mr Loverman which is a beautiful novel exploring the life of Britain's older Caribbean community, through the perspective of a 74-year-old Antiguan-Londoner and closeted homosexual, and his wife Carmel. I am aware this isn't GCSE but I think it could encourage more take-up of a broader spec with modern themes considering all books are 21st century.

I’ve seen Hamlet and Lear in KS3 as well. It’s ridiculous doing plays that aren’t age appropriate in the name of challenge when there are plenty that do work. We do a practical approach to A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Year 7, Comedy of Errors in Year 8 and Romeo and Juliet in Year 9.

I was disgusted to find out pigeon English was written by a white man! I don't think it's an option on our exam board.

Highly recommend teaching Leave Taking- it's great.

Completely agree with posters who are saying genuine change won't happen until Inspector is removed from the exam board.

I don't think it's been said (apologies if I missed it) but it is on the national curriculum that students at Key Stage 3 must study two Shakespeare plays- that's why it seems like they do it in every year. My major gripe with this is the teaching can be poor, but also text choice can be really poor- I know a school who does Othello in year 7 and you can talk about ambition all you like, but the play is fundamentally unsuitable for key stage 3!

True I'm not a fan of all the characters but still like the book overall. Though there's always one character to hate which can be fun, like Nick in Gatsby or Othello who is way too vain for my liking.

I have no issues discussing all
of these things @TheLivelyViper- it’s just the nature of it in PIgeon English I dislike. Miquita is horrible.

Yes plays are meant to be watched at @Pieceofpurplesky but I do still think essays can be useful because analysis of an actor and of writing techniques can compliment each other (and good teachers include this) but are still distinct and I do think there's still merit to writing an analysis of a play. I wouldn't want to just focus on how an actor portrays a character, as I do want students own ideas on a character in terms of what the playwright wanted emersed with the understanding of specific play techniques. I think good students often do this well in their answers and would still want to keep that personally.

O have had that discussion in class many times - I did Streetcar at A-level and had the discussion with the rape scene. I also did in Y9 with a book we did, I mean my GSSE English teacher (senior examiner for OCR) did lessons on bestiality with us and also in Sociology GCSE and History GCSE we have discussions about sexual assult, slavery, the history of gynaecology where enslaved women were experimented on (J personally don't think we should shy away from it as long as its done responsibility and senstively). Also in Of Mice and Men, there's rape and I did that in Y8 and we talked about it. I'll tell you that it was much worse that my teacher and other students said the n-word in a class with a few Black students, where we all sat together than the discussion about SA. Even in GCSE I did my language presentation in Y11 on the orgasm gap and the history of virginity and sex and SA being the foundation of it. We also did Jekyll and Hyde and we talked about prostitution, homosexuality and all of that and rape during the poem 'London' by Black and learnt it for context.

Plus there are still other texts to do if a school doesn't want to approach Piegon English for that reason, however I don't think this is the reason they don't do it as many English teachers and departments I've worked with have never even read it and don't know what it's about. Yes @GrammarTeacher I would take AIC off the spec (but I do think many schools would complain because they say its the most accessible). I personally am not a fan of Curious Incident or the History Boys but I did to Never Let me Go in Y9 and loved it so would have liked them to keep it. I'd also really like reform of Paper 1, I'd change the requirement for Shakespeare (just make it about plays), and then I'd do 20th or 21st literature prose instead of 19th century. I do quite like doing poetry anthology though, and I'd just change the unseen element in paper 1 to 1 question of a few more marks.

I just think they could do so much better with texts. Shakespeare - why essays? He wrote to be watched so his plays should be studied as they were meant to be - watched. Analyse the presentation of a character by an actor instead. Scrap the anthology and make the question unseen - so we can teach analysis and appreciation rather than a memory test. Include more modern writers - get the kids enjoying reading … alongside books they enjoy like Animal Farm. Government should poll teachers to find out.

I find Pigeon English problematic. When the older girl doves him to touch her - if it was the other way around it would be sexual abuse. Too many kids have been there to make it possible to have that frank discussion.

I’ve worked with both AQA and OCR on this issue. I do teach Worlds and Lives (vast improvement on the tokenistic ‘inclusion’ in the previous anthologies).

I know. However they removed a book by Kashuo Ishiguro, the play of Curious Incident (neurodiversity) and The History Boys (homosexuality). This was done as these were the least popular texts.
True diversity on this paper will only come when AIC is removed.
I stand by my point that AQA is behind both OCR and Edexcel on this.

But there are more book options which include women, and different ethnicities: Pigeon English and My Name is Leon and Anita and me are good books. And if they want to do a play instead Princess and the Hustler and Leave Taking are on the list to choose from. These are all much more modern etc. Then for poetry they recently added a Poetry anthology called World's and Lives (more modern and diverse authors/context). I've worked with AQA and they have added much more diverse texts across the last few years. They added these in 2022/2023 and they were assessed for the first time this year.

I so agree, frankly students are bored of Shakespeare by Y10. Why wouldn't they when it's been rammed down their throats - I love some Shakespeare and he's a great playwright but there are so many amazing playwrights and students should get to be exposed to them to. I still feel like in many schools the English department is shocked at how much less and less students do A-level even those who have the potential and it's as if they haven't clocked that students are bored of the same old, same old. We shouldn't just be saying we'll a text about a different cultures aren't accessible so we must continue doing Inspector Calls and Lord of the Flies every year - because the canon is great and we must continue the canon because... we've always taught the canon. We can make these texts accessible if we start from Y7, more and more classes and schools are full of diversity and English is the only subject where we must look inwards and place ourselves in the characters shoes. There is a new anthology @Pieceofpurplesky called World and Lives, some schools have said no to that because they can't be bothered to put in the effort to teach different stories and make some new PowerPoints. It's absolutely not difficult to do this it would just be too challenging because we need to learn new context and the same old excuses, whilst English A-level and degree numbers continue to drop.

I meant 34% of students are BAME (not 4%) (and non-BAME students need to learn about different cultures etc) bit 0.7% study a book by a writer of colour at GCSE and 0.1% women of colour at GCSE. It just not good enough to consistently across the years only do 'canon' texts which are conveniently all by white authors, basically we repeatdly only teach canon texts because we've always done canon texts.

I think some of the words on the Lit in Colour page of students talking about how they feel so unrepresented in a classroom are more important than the constant push to do the most basic GCSE texts to ensure everyone can pass, when we are literally pulling children away from a love of the subject and further study of it.
https://litincolour.penguin.co.uk/
https://litincolour.penguin.co.uk/assets/Lit-in-Colour-research-report.pdf

AQA were the last board to join the push to diversify Paper 2 (and they handled it badly - removing the only diverse options already there!). Lit In Colour is a fab programme. I recommend applying to be an ambassador school. We were gifted 500 books (yes 500!) by Penguin to diversify our library.
OCR have had a good take up of their new texts actually. I’m hoping to move to Leave Taking in 2026-7 (would switch this year but teaching years 7-9 for the first time in a while so I have a lot to brush up.

When Gove redid the curriculum it became mainly white, middle class, straight male writers with the odd exception. Even Pigeon English (based on the murder of Damilola Taylor) is written by a white man and glosses over female on male sexual abuse. A couple of poems were added to the anthology - but the old ‘Other Cultures’ was much better.
i have been teaching for 24 years. An Inspector Calls works because the students enjoy it on the whole. Even the lower ability students get the basic detective story plot and the higher ability students can be introduced to critical theory and how to apply to writing.
I always start with a survey. Who is at home/who works/who does most of the work at home/what roles do siblings have - it never surprises me that most homes have two adults, both work and the woman does most of the cooking and cleaning. Female siblings are more likely to collect younger siblings from school. That springboards a discussion on roles of women and if they have changed. We then look at context.
other discussions include consent, misogyny, suffrage etc.
We end with the question of whether society has listened to Priestley’s warnings about women (refer back to survey), society and war. The answer, sadly, is no.

@TheLivelyViper I completely agree.

I also find the 2% of students studying a whole text by a female author stat hugely troubling, and the stats at KS3 aren’t much better.

The obsession with Shakespeare needing to be taught in every year group means that women and people of colour barely get a look in - both as writers and as protagonists - which means that in many classrooms, children are invisible in the texts they are being taught, and harmful narratives around white male supremacy continue to be an inherent (and unspoken) backbone of the curriculum. It’s the same in History.

Teachers do have choices - there are female writers on the GCSE set text lists, there are writers of colour, and there is ample free choice at KS3. Yet most teachers continually fall back on the same limited core of texts that are self perpetuating as new teachers come through seeing this core being taught in their placement schools and not developing the new knowledge required. I do a lot of work with ITT providers and with teachers on developing English curricula and in most schools at KS3 it’s the same old stuff being taught - A Christmas Carol, Of Mice and Men, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm - no female characters (and if there are, they’re victims) no people of colour as characters (and if there are, they’re victims), no playwrights other than Shakespeare. No one seems to actually sit back and look at the content and authorship of the texts they’re teaching across year groups and consider balance. And we wonder why English is a dying subject at A Level. The curriculum
in so many schools is homogenous, dull and depressing. And when there are so many fabulous books being published for young people that are diverse and exciting that we could be teaching instead, I find it criminal that there is such a lack of appetite for change amongst teachers. I know it’s hard to find time and money, but surely we’re all fed up of teaching the same old shit?!?

I think what Lit in Colour are doing is great but I’d love to see a similar push for getting more female writers and protagonists on the curriculum. Diversity should be intersectional. End Sexism in Schools are doing a brilliant job if you look at their research but they don’t seem to have managed to get much traction going with a publisher willing to partner with them to make a bigger noise about the lack of female voices in classrooms. Doesn’t surprise me though. No one ever cares about women!

And on the Shakespeare front - I don’t question the quality and value of the work. I just don’t think it’s so superior to any other literature produced throughout the history of English Literature that it should be taught in every single year group at school. If schools taught a Charles Dickens novel every single year to the exclusion of any other novelist, we’d see it as an issue. Yet not teaching any playwright other than Shakespeare is apparently fine, because it’s Shakespeare. As an English/Drama teacher, I take huge issue with the majority of children leaving school only being aware of two dramatists - Shakespeare and Priestley. Given the huge dramatic legacy of British playwrights in the 20th and 21st centuries, it’s dreadful that most schools offer such a limited dramatic education to our young people.

I do think I agree that Shakespeare can be taught better but the problem is that across Y7 - Y11 kids are likely to not study any books from an author of colour when 82% have never studied a text with BAME authors and putting BAME peoples stories at the center. Which is ridiculous, as I mentioned above most schools only do (except at A-level) Shakespeare as the only playwright they study. It's absolutely mad to constantly to 16th century stuff, with 16th century context, of course BAME students feel ignored by a curriculum which literally ignores them. Despite AQA and other exam boards adding many books focusing on people of colour and different cultures on Paper 2, so little schools have entered in it, because it's too difficult to make new resources, or teachers want to stick with the same old, same old which just isn't fair and isn't necessary anyways.

4% of students are BAME (and non-BAME students need to learn about different cultures etc) bit 0.7% study a book by a writer of colour at GCSE and 0.1% women of colour at GCSE. It just not good enough to consistently across the years only do 'canon' texts which are conveniently all by white authors, basically we repeatdly only teach canon texts because we've always done canon texts. Which conveniently lack racial and female diversity and are highly unlikely to be 20th or 21st century. I also think it's the lack of racial training in PGCEs that contributes when only 12% of secondary teachers actually get adequate training on it, which shows when they continue to pick books which have harmful trops as the only book about people of colour being Of Mice and Men, getting students to actually say the n-word or teachers consistently saying it themselves. I'm telling you myself and other Balck students found it the most uncomfortable thing plus why is the only text you select, showing the Black character to have a learning disability (fine, but in a very racial world), as the only one they do, what are schools saying when they do that. I think the Lit in Colour movement is doing lots of work to help schools improve and it's something all English departments need to look at - https://litincolour.penguin.co.uk/ and their report - https://litincolour.penguin.co.uk/assets/Lit-in-Colour-research-report.pdf
Also hopefully the Curriculum and Assesment Review will change this as it did allude to it in the intermin report, and Becky Francis seems to want to change it quite a bit, finally.

There's an insidious "Shakespeare is boring" and "Shakespeare is hard" and "Shakespeare is elitist" attitude which can be tackled by good teaching. I've had TAs say "oh no, not Macbeth" and then 3 lessons in be really enjoying it. I teach in a school where the VAST majority (80+%) have english as an additional language - it's HOW you teach and how well you know the texts that's important.

Quite frankly teachers need to up their game on Shakespeare. He’s relevant to everyone. And performed globally. The Globe has even done an entire season of Shakespeare in global languages. The themes are universal.
There is an issue with the quality of Shakespeare teaching though. And indeed the knowledge base that some teachers have on texts. Some of the stuff I’ve seen written about Lady Macbeth is beyond shocking for example. For instance, people genuinely believing the audience would be amazed an 11th century woman could read. Failing to account for the fact that she’d have been running Macbeth’s estate. Upper class women could read and write and so much more. They had to. The shock is the way their domestic situation becomes the public one. For a political play it’s exceptionally domestic. It’s fascinating. And its exploration of what makes a good king (and man) is amazing. I adore Act 4 Scene 3. It’s fascinating. Many struggle with it.
I also saw people complaining about an Edexcel question on the Porter scene years ago. They said that the scene was an irrelevant distraction, demonstrating that they hadn’t got it at all.