A few years ago, under new headship, my school introduced a fresh set of values outlining our hopes for pupil conduct. Posters were printed, assemblies delivered and a newsletter was emailed home.
This is, of course, fairly common practice and perhaps offers newly appointed headteachers a swift opportunity to rebrand policy in their own image.
I think of school values as a sort of lens that can frame any interaction or behaviour, during and outwith lessons. I doubt there is huge variance across the country, but in my school our values are the handily alliterative principles of compassion, confidence, commitment and courage - often referred to as The Four Cs.
Reimagining the English curriculum
With this framework in mind, I had a desire to reimagine my curriculum in the English department. With pupils being encouraged to live their values through other school channels, why not through the study of literature?
I felt this was a way to increase coherence in terms of long-term planning, while also expanding cultural richness. Rather than cherrypicking from whatever was available in the book cupboard, we would learn about The Four Cs through great writers and their stories. I also felt aware of the predominance of straight white men in the literary canon of Scottish schools and wanted to avoid presenting a homogeneous experience of literature.
Teachers familiar with the Curriculum for Excellence will be aware that there are no set texts specified within the “experiences and outcomes” for English or literacy. Critics would point out that this leaves a lot of individual choice in teachers’ hands, potentially leading pupils into a narrow or thin worldview of literature.
On the other hand, this freedom can empower us to guarantee that pupils leave school with a varied and deep understanding of a range of books, poems and plays.
For values to become truly embedded within a school community, they should be more than just a poster on the wall. As staff, we talk often about what these values look like in action, and how we could recognise and reward pupils when they modelled them. What constitutes a courageous act? How can we support pupils to show compassion to others?
We agreed, as a department, on which texts would spotlight specific school values. As well as being angled in these directions, we have committed to ensuring that pupils study texts by female, LGBTQ+, ethnically diverse and Scottish writers. Having a forward-thinking strategy helps us give pupils genuine exposure to literature and culture - or as much as is possible within the constraints of a tight school timetable.
Ensuring transparency of purpose
To ensure transparency of purpose, as well as pupil awareness, we have built a wall display explaining our rationale and choice of texts. I want pupils to know why we are learning about particular books and to be able to articulate the connections between them.
To that end, bespoke assessment tools are being used to gauge how capable pupils are of piecing together their literacy skills, their interpretation of each text and their understanding of a particular value.
Structuring our course plans along these milestones can aid pupils in identifying commonalities and contradictions between texts. Does this writer explore the value of courage more effectively through characterisation than another? What features of language do these poets use to create a sense of compassion? Reading and writing should be a vehicle towards building cultural capital, as well as helping pupils make sense of the world and their own place in it.
Tackling literature from these perspectives will help pupils prepare more thoroughly for National 5 and Higher English courses. The ability to analyse the connective tissue between texts becomes a more explicit part of the exam components in the senior phase. Students are being prepared to reflect on a writer’s purpose and ultimate endgame - thinking about why writers write.
Looking more broadly, my desire for a values-rich literary curriculum is to develop transferable skills that pupils can use across subjects. By appreciating subtext, principles and abstract thinking, I believe that The Four Cs - or whatever set of values different schools adopt - can become more than a faded poster on the classroom wall.
Alan Gillespie is principal teacher of English at Fernhill School, an independent school near Glasgow
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