When I left sixth-form, my English teacher joked to me that I’d “escaped just in time”. It was June 2015 and a whole raft of changes to GCSEs and A levels were about to take hold.

I am now embarking on the final year of my English degree and, although I am indeed no longer subject to the constantly mutating exam structures and curricula of the state school system, I can’t help but feel burdened by the recent reforms to GCSEs and A levels, and anxious about the future of English literature as a subject.

Aside from an initial freak-out when I was assigned an essay on Monday morning of freshers’ week, I felt fairly well prepared for the transition from A level to degree-level study, carrying many of the same skills with me and inevitably refining them through weekly tutorials and classes. Obviously, I can only speculate, but had I been taught under the reformed curriculum I’m doubtful as to whether I would have been as well prepared, or even as passionate.

I’ll begin with the lesser of the two evils in the recent reforms to secondary school English: the reduction of coursework at A level. At my university, submitted work comprises nearly half of our final assessment. Given that exam and coursework essays are usually very different in style and scope, it’s important to be prepared for both. My AS and A-level coursework was what best prepared me for my weekly tutorial essays. They taught me how to reference properly and gave me greater freedom to think experimentally without the pressure of memorising vast swathes of what I was learning. I had the space and time to interpret and reinterpret texts, allowing my ideas to mature over a series of weeks and becoming more invested in the essay I was writing as a result.

‘Pressure cooker’ style of learning

Perhaps coursework is “easier” in the sense that it can allow room for plagiarism, but weaving together a coherent yet complex and original argument over 3000 words is ultimately down to individual skill. It is a shame to make almost every assessment time-pressured, and thus dependent upon the brain’s adrenaline-fuelled, quote-regurgitating, quick-thinking, quick-writing mental machine, as opposed to challenging its capacity for more in-depth, accumulative thought and refined presentation.

This regression from a playful and liberating classroom environment to a pressure cooker style of learning is even more apparent within the new English literature GCSE. The closed-book system sucks the energy out of the subject as students spend more time cramming in quotes than they do engaging with the life of the text itself.

My degree-level exams are entirely closed-book and are challenging to prepare for even now. While some may therefore argue that the new GCSEs better equip students for university study, making things harder at an earlier stage could dissuade them from pursuing it as a degree altogether. Qualifications are supposed to be about progression, with study getting increasingly challenging yet more rewarding the higher up you go. I had always been a passionate reader and an able English student, but I decided I wanted to study it at university only during sixth-form; this new format doesn’t give students the space to fall in love with the subject, rendering the prospect of A level and thus degree-level study far less attractive.

Prioritising ‘quantitative thinking’ over ‘creative energy’

Literature is, at its heart, about people; no other subject enables you to imaginatively inhabit such a multitude of different places, periods, and perspectives from cultures very different to your own; no other subject teaches you as much about the construction of identity or develops your own capacity for empathy so acutely.

Perhaps it is just my overly figurative English-student-brain at work here, but there seems to be a certain irony in changing the grading system from letters to numbers. I wonder whether it reflects a general trend towards quantitative thinking and the prioritisation of Stem subjects over creative energy and critical thought.

Reforms to secondary school English literature should be designed to attract students and encourage creativity, as opposed to deterring them through the oppressive weight of quote-learning and less accessible texts. As clichéd as it sounds, no other subject has contributed so powerfully to my developing sense of self, helping me make sense of my own relationships and the dominant discourses of power at work around the world. I’d like as many students as possible to share this experience of literature, and that doesn’t involve putting them off it before they get the chance.

Madeleine Pollard is a third year English student at the University of Oxford