I called my project “Write On” for a number of reasons: First, because puns seem to go down well with funders. Secondly, because “Right on!” is representative of the exuberant, vintage slang that I love so much in our language; joyful, and playful, and ironic, and zealous all at once. Oh and also because it’s what I want my learners to do, particularly in the high-value extended-writing sections of the GCSE English exam.

For two years now, I’ve been working on Write On with a small but inspiring team in my own college, and a growing number of peers nationally, to improve the experience and outcomes in post-16 English. It is supported by education charity SHINE, who fund efforts to raise attainment for economically-disadvantaged students. The project is built on the principles of difference, engagement, and confidence. Resit-English should feel different from school and be intrinsically engaging as a subject. Most of all, English should build confidence. A subject that develops communication skills and that promotes spontaneity, creativity, and challenge should be an educational endorphin rush.

Write On has created a mandate for innovative and experimental approaches in the delivery of a subject where, if we’re being honest, we only need to prepare students for about four different types of question. To that end, the project encompasses a number of original strategies including the use of low-stakes expressive writing journals, role-playing games, and a curriculum that uses graphic novels, hi-lo readers, and young-adult fiction as a bridge to more-challenging texts.

Commitment to the cause

One of the things that makes me so proud to work with SHINE is their commitment to their cause. Last year they moved, physically and in terms of their focus, to the north of England where the attainment of disadvantaged children is lowest. Although far from my own low-income province, I was impressed by SHINE’s vision for the Northern Powerhouse and took the almost trans-Siberian train journey to convince Jonny Kay, head of English and maths at Hartlepool College of Further Education, to join the project.

“My hope,” explains Jonny, “is that we will begin to alter and adapt our resources and lesson content to further engage students, making stronger connections and building stronger relationships.”

Connecting with Jonny has been a highlight of the project for me personally. We joke that we seem to be leading oddly parallel lives at different ends of the country. Both of us picked up leadership of resit teams immediately after moving into FE from schools where the progress agenda was front and centre. The idea, predominant in resit discourse just a few years ago, that it was an impossible expectation for students to improve their GCSE grade, chokes us with disbelieving laughter.

‘Light at the end of the tunnel’

“Student engagement was a real positive,” Jonny told me after he visited my own college recently. “Concepts such as the journals clearly helped build a good relationship with teachers and helped students begin to see progression and a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.”

Like me, Hartlepool’s principal Darren Hankey was the first in his family to make it to university and I suspect that this informs his commitment to social justice through improving English provision. “Good levels of literacy are positively correlated to wider academic and employment outcomes,” he tells me.

“At Hartlepool College of FE, we work hard to ensure those students who come to us without a good GCSE pass in English leave us with this qualification.  The Write On project complements the work we do in the college, stretching and challenging students by developing their extended writing skills.”

Expressive-writing journals

Lead practitioner, 2019 TES FE teacher of the year nominee and fellow SHINE grant winner Dr Alice Eardley, will also be introducing elements of the Write On project at her college. “We’re really excited about trying out the expressive-writing journals with our students. We think that this approach presents a brilliant opportunity to help students see that writing can be more than just something they have to do for exams or because they’re told to.”

The low-stakes journals in which learners can write freely without aim or fear of critical feedback, seem to be the element of the project that generates most enthusiasm. It is a simple idea, easily implemented. It has proved especially successful at my own college, with the trial groups that took part last year making significantly more progress than the rest of the cohort.

It’s difficult for a relies-on-instinct-and-luck teacher to explain though… How precisely does writing a few pages of unassessed angst every week improve GCSE outcomes? Fortunately, we have Leeds Beckett University’s Dr Ellie Willard helping us to study the impact. Jonny actually first made the link with Ellie, after hearing her talk about the positive impact expressive writing had on maths attainment.

Effective intervention

“Work by researchers, such as Beilock and Pennebaker,” she explains, “has shown that expressive writing is an effective intervention for both reducing test anxiety and increasing academic confidence. The research on journal writing will provide a quantitative measure of its effectiveness and a qualitative account of how it has helped students.”

Whatever happens with the project nationally and in terms of research outcomes, Write On has undoubtedly improved my own practice and helped me to find many new ways to enjoy the delivery of English-resit. Hopefully, that enjoyment has been shared by at least some of my students! The journals continue to provide curious, uplifting, or heartbreaking windows into the lives and thoughts of our learners.

“They’re making me cry,” a colleague messaged me yesterday, describing her response to reading one especially-vulnerable group’s journal entries. Now our job as English teachers is to find writing that provokes as strong a response in our students as their writing does in us.

Andrew Otty leads 16-19 English in an FE college. He is an ambassador for education charity SHINE.

SHINE’s Let Teachers Shine competition offers up to £15,000 to teachers who have brilliant ideas to help disadvantaged children succeed in English, maths or science. Let Teachers Shine 2019 opens 21st January. Find out more [ www.shinetrust.org.uk/LTS2019 ].