A level Lit

[Piggywaspushed]

Anyone got any ideas or thoughts why the decline in popularity of Lit? Is it just the cult of STEM? (no offence STEM ists)

At my school, the numbers for next year have twice as many doing economics as A level lit, 3 times as many doing maths and 3 times as many doing physics and psychology...

Politics has fallen off, too, but history remains very popular.

Large comp - high achieving - lots of A level choice. Usual issues of MFL being dead on its feet.

Yeah, if you think things are bad in English, imagine how bad they must be in maths to be getting that kind of incentive.

Indeed. Not in my school, though, oddly. maths teachers everywhere!

Anyway, can I go back to why we don't care about boys taking English lit where we do care about girls taking maths A-level? I want to talk stats!

Due to the huge shortage of maths-literate adults causing massive economic problems so we need as many hands on deck as possible, the problem with girls in maths is that they get the grades at GCSE, then choose other subjects. This represents an untapped talent pool who could be steered in the right direction.

English don't have the 'shortage' argument, so more people taking English lit isn't crucial to the economy and it's low down the government priority list. BUT in addition, it's not the case that boys are getting the grades at GCSE then being turned off English lit in huge numbers, the problem with boys is also a supply issue.

The figures for English lit GCSE last year (9-1, I know some schools did IGCSE) had:
Boys: 9-4 pass rate of 64.7% and 9-7 pass rate of 13.3%
Girls: 9-4 pass rate of 79.2% and 9-7 pass rate of 24.3%

And for English GCSE:
Boys: 9-4 pass rate of 56.5% and 9-7 pass rate of 9.8%
Girls: 9-4 pass rate of 73.7% and 9-7 pass rate of 19.7%

The focus for boys and English has to be getting them to pass their GCSE. While English lit A-level is a nice-to-have, a GCSE pass and basic literacy is essential, and until they are doing much better at GCSE, they're not going to be a massive source of A-level candidates.

maths teachers everywhere!

You might want to keep that one quiet! It might also be why maths A-level take-up is good.

yes, lots of huge issues there. Not least the over rewarding of florid language, the highly gendered Language exam and the tendency for neat handwriting to be over rewarded. Thinking outside the box is now not sufficiently rewarded either.

Nonetheless there are still boys getting those high grades - and then not doing English...

And girls now!

@Piggy - They had a TIE company in to perform it the other week. Dd said it wasn't a very good standard (her school is a perf arts specialist school so the kids tend to know their stuff. The Q & A was interesting!

The lower set get to do Blood Brothers.

Dd was told during a study skills day with an examiner that they must not disagree with the question or criticise the writer or their marks would be lower.

That seems very different to my day.

which considering her whole class think that you must have been high on drugs to write a poem about being someone's coffee pot didn't go down well.

One thing I found from the girls who decided not to take maths despite high grades was that it wasn't their only high grade, they had loads of choice of subjects to take. With maths, because it's the only subject where boys outperform girls, if a boy got a high grade, it was probably their highest grade GCSE and so they were obviously going to take it.

If you've got boys getting high grades in English, they're probably getting good grades across the board. Like the girls who don't choose maths, these boys don't have to choose English, because they have other options.

Hopefully not another book where the female character isn’t even named

Hmmmmm. Sorry to report @noble, two out of the three gcse texts I teach don’t name the leading lady (Mrs Johnstone in Blood Brothers and Lady Macbeth) Your teacher sounds rubbish though, OMAM is all about the debates!

I love Katherine Mansfield. And I loathe Of Mice and Men.
Otherwise I have nothing of use to add to the thread

And Dr Jekyll - no females in that apart from the little girl who gets trampled I think!

Christmas Carol just shadowy love interest form the past and a few bit players. The kids giggle incessantly at Fanny.

A Level has slightly better feminist credentials not much and don't get me started on representations of race.

Hamilton I am wondering whether that was a specific reference to the Q4 of Eng Lang paper 1 where past questions have been such searingly obvious statements that it made no sense to disagree. Until the actual GCSE exam where the question then set up a debate. That threw many many students who had been told that the statement was never actually meant to be debated with...

As a general rule at GCSE the most able still debate or at least really engage (issues like sympathy for Lady Macbeth are always great) and it is a marker f their ability.

We do have to remember that I am not just talking about luring in grade 9s and 8s to A level. We'd be happy with 6s and 7s too. Even 5s.

noble - I think 4 boys got grade 9s in lit last year. One of them is doing English and one of the others isn't doing English but is doing Film ! ( and graphics and physics)

DS1 is apparently doing Blood Brothers for GCSE in two years which I am not too thrilled about given the other texts he could do. Also, Frankenstein. Bleugh.

His school got unexpectedly very very high English and Lit GCSE results last year (well.... some of them did) so I am not sure why they have changed their texts.

Why are you unhappy about him studying Blood Brothers? (Genuine questions, not being facetious). My classes love it and got great grades with it last year.

I like it when my DSs do texts I can help them with at home. I have read neither BB nor Frankenstein (ploughed through great Expectations and learnt the other poetry cluster to help DS1)

Not opposed to BB per se but it seems a bit superficial compared to choices such as Animal Farm and Inspector Calls. It's always seemed more of a 'drama' text.

Well it’s an easy read so you can fix that

It’s superficial on the surface (I’m not generally a fan of musicals) but every tine I teach it I spot something else clever about it. There’s loads you can look at in terms of social context, mental health, poverty etc.

Frankenstein on the other hand? Meh. I’ve no idea why anyone would choose to teach it at gcse. Far too long winded!

I did Frankenstein at A level 30 years ago and my ds1 did it 6 years ago . It is one of those books that I have thought about regularly over those years , the themes of nature versus nurture still speak to modern readers after nearly 200 years . Yes the story has problems but you need to read at speed there is so much more to it . Mary Shelley is a fascinating charActer as well.

I do wish they could get rid of Mice and men though .🙁

We did Henry James Portrait of a Lady which as an 18 year old I loved , no sign of Dickens on the syllabus or Matthew Arnold which I also studied at A level . Also not as much Jane Austen or Hardy it seems to me but we are only year 11 with ds3

They have got rid of Of Mice And Men for the last tiem and every English teacher is very sad!! It was not my intention to turn this into a Steinbeck bashing thread (skulks back to corner to sulk)

Most people would trace low engagement of learners at GCSE and possibly low uptake at A level back to Gove's self driven decisions to remove US lit from the spec and replace with the likes of Frankenstein, Austen and Great Expectations. And, actually, it hasn't worked for him because , through time issues and some common sense, most teachers are going for Christmas Carol and Jekyll and Hyde.

Hardy is all over the A Level. Both novels and poetry.

I don't think you would be a typical 16 year old primula!

I accede that F may be interesting but prefer Jekyll.

I don't know if anyone has said this but is it because kids spend their days playing computer games now and they just don't have the concentration span to read a good book, especially a quality classic with demanding language?

I didn't do English A level because I liked reading books, not dissecting them - as someone said above, the analysis took the joy out of reading. I still remember with a shudder having to analyse Mr Collins' letter from Pride and Prejudice for GCSE. I would have done an English lang A level if it had been on offer to me.

I also did Frankenstein for A-level (nearly 20 years ago) and adored it. Thematically there’s so much in it. I presume there’s no coursework any more? We did dystopian literature for ours: 1984, Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale.

It’s very sad to hear kids are being put off by the new GCSE. When I took GCSEs and A levels, it wasn’t prescriptive at all: nobody cared what you wrote/how you responded to the text, as long as you could argue it persuasively. That was the whole point!

On a slightly different note, as a university lecturer we see the damage of the rigid approach to discursive subjects at GCSEs/A-levels. It’s very hard to break students out of the ‘regurgitate facts/correct answer’ mentality imposed by public exams .

It sounds like even English teachers are not enthused by the choice of texts so how on earth can we expect teenagers to be?

The lack of named female characters is depressing - is that at least balanced at KS3 when you can choose your own texts or has OMAM just been shuffled to Y8 because you’ve got the class sets?

Yes, and indeed , the way the A level questions are worded allegedly encourages argument, which is great. Unfortunately, A level history and politics in particular are very big culprits in teaching students a very rigid approach to this.

The examiners' report for English A level states very clear that students are not necessarily expected to present both sides of an argument and then plonk their bums on the fence at the end. This came as quite a shock to my year 13s who have been conditioned.

The other annoying one is 'typicality' where some teachers think this means we can just tell them what happens in other books and the refer to them without having even cracked the spine. that gets my goat too.

I don't teach eyar 8. I said we shouldn't put OMAM in year 9 because of the violence and swearing.

But please stop it already with the OMAM bashing. it is a great text for discussing male violence and misogyny and really brings that debate alive.

But, yes, tis partly true. Not many of us is enthusiastic about the new texts. I LOVE Animal farm and Shakespeare but nothing is as lovely and stimulating to teach as OMAM. Honest. My students wrote a letter to their MP about it a couple of years ago!!

To Kill A Mockingbird (female protagonist and author!) went at the same time.

Ds is in Year 9 & is studying OMAM as GCSE prep (the school has a full set of texts from the previous syllabus they don't want to waste?) He has enjoyed reading the book but struggling a little to write about it but I found a great article about the specific issues with autistic children & this text to help him.

Dd is doing Edexel. She's a Grade 7/8 maybe on a good day if the stats go well a potential 9 candidate.

The examiner comment was in relation I think to the poetry anthology & d & some of her classmates arguing that the devices the poet used were not effective etc.

Year 9 at my place is obsessed with teaching 'skills' to equip them for the English GCSE . 'Not another assessment' is the commonly heard phrase.

We are doing Victorian short stories at the moment and have done Oliver Twist (violence gains women alert!) until this year. We also do some dull Shakespeare (we now have no choice! Choice !??! Ha!)

I think I have actually in this thread answered my own question in the OP.

I am actually regretting not following the career path of being head of English when I could have as I think I would have fought against a lot of these strictures and - Canute like - held back the tide.