Malorje Blackman GCSE

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DD has just told me that the first text they're studying for GCSE English Lit in Sept is "Boys don't cry" by Malorie Blackman. She's a bit surprised. Like most teen girls she went through a Malorie Blackman phase in year 8 and read everything, but was very surprised to be studying it in year 10. I've just read it (I have a degree in English - admittedly 30 years ago!) It's a good book. Engaging. Lots of issues to talk about- but it's honestly not great in a literary sense. I'm hugely supportive of studying non white authors, expanding the range of books etc but there are a lot of really great lnon white authors published today who are a lot more "literary" than Malorie Blackman. It's a book designed to hammer home "issues" in a relatively unsubtle way.

What am I missing here?

Generally if what you are doing is sensible and justifiable then it should be OK. I do sometimes wonder how many of these hoops schools complain they have to jump through for Ofsted are imaginary.

You would think so but " should be ok" is not how it works in my experience. Sadly not imaginary but that's a whole new thread.

This is what I struggle with. I know teaching is hard in many many ways, but why would heads of department make things harder for their own staff and get less good results?

It must be that risk taking isn't being encouraged/rewarded. Or that the 'wrong' people are being promoted. or it makes revision classes harder to organise? Or maybe that too many parents complain if their child then ends up with the 'wrong' text and no one wants to tell them to shut up or spend time justifying it?

It's a potent mix of all of those things, in my experience.

Inexperienced hods need easy wins with SLT.
Inexperienced staff often want to teach what they were taught.
I know teachers teach best when they're passionate and students get more out of it.
I've been HoD and trained teachers.

Bit late to this thread, but we’re on holiday with friends. Their daughter (going into Year 10) is lying on the beach reading Purple Hibiscus. It’s one of her GCSE texts and she is loving it. Seems like a good option to me.

When I started teaching English 15 years ago, at GCSE level there was some scope to choose which coursework tasks and literature texts we did. Now we all teach exactly the same lessons never mind texts, as this is what Ofsted reportedly want to see....

It isn't what Ofsted want to see, in my recent experience. You do need to explain and justify your curriculum, and I'd expect some questioning around why different groups were doing different texts and how that works within the whole, but that's reasonable I think.

I think that Ofsted don’t say they want the same curriculum for all. They use the word “appropriate”. This covers content, structure, coverage and sequencing” and “implemented it effectively”. This is in the handbook. Therefore you don’t have to teach the same to all if it’s not appropriate to do so. You do
have to justify decisions though. That’s reasonable.,

You can study almost any written word in a literary sense. I did my masters thesis on cookbooks so know how deep you can dive to pull information from a text.

Would you add those to the list of books for gcse study?

Given that the term 'cookery book' covers a huge range of types, from a simple collection of 'things based on chicken' / 'puddings' etc to what is mainly a travel journal / social history of a geographical area with a few representative recipes tucked in somewhere within the text, there may well be scope for it at the latter end, at least?

@MarchingFrogs
I agree! The travel ones and Toast by Nigel Slater spring to mind! However as a general genre, they are not literary heavyweights in terms of painting pictures and use of language or even delving into challenging social issues. It does demonstrate the difference between a masters and GCSE though!

I am a teacher and work in a school library as well, I also love Malorie Blackman. I too was surprised by Boys don t Cry, but be fair OP it is better than the festival of misery that is Of Mice and Men.
And there is an issue with a lot of young adult fiction being quite easy to read, this to do with writers and publishers wanting to appeal to such a wide audience.