The UK’s largest exam board has announced changes to the 2021 GCSE history and English literature exams following recommendations from Ofqual.

AQA announced changes to its GCSE history and English literature courses for 2021 today, which will make poetry study compulsory for GCSE English literature.

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GCSE English 2021: Has poetry been dropped?

Following Ofqual’s announcement that there would be more choice in history exams and a reduction in the compulsory subject areas in English literature - the board said exams would cover less content for GCSE English literature and history next year.

In English literature, there would be compulsory study of poetry and Shakespeare, and then the option of answering questions on either a nineteenth-century novel or a modern text.

And for GCSE history, pupils would have a choice of studies with one compulsory topic.

“This means that in summer 2021, AQA GCSE history students will only have to answer questions on three out of four studies,” the board said.

However, some teachers on social media have been angered by AQA’s proposed changes to the specification.

What IN THE BLUE HELL are AQA thinking? Poetry and Shakespeare compulsory with the choice between C19 novel and modern text? This is no help to my centre, as we’ve already taught both the “optional” units. It doesn’t seem to match what the Ofqual document said at all. Speechless.

- Neil Pollock (@NeilPollock_Eng) September 10, 2020

Some teachers described the change as an “egregious” lack of duty shown by the board.

It isn’t patience. I cannot understand why this is so late when we are all teaching. It is an egregious lack of duty to the people who follow your specification - to those students and their teachers. https://t.co/zXUfICbR51

- Ms Caldwell (@MsCaldwell1) September 10, 2020

Pauline McPartlan, AQA’s head of curriculum for English said: “We know how many challenges teachers are facing right now, so we’ve worked hard to make and explain our changes to GCSE English Literature as quickly as possible - but media speculation about poetry becoming optional has unfortunately caused some confusion.

“We hope that keeping the poetry anthology will help maximise teaching time as students can use the skills they’ve developed in analysing poetry in the unseen part of the exam.”