As I sit on a sun-soaked beach immersed in holiday wellbeing, the curriculum change that has beset English departments since 2014 seems very distant, which may account for the more mellow tenor of my article.

At the inception of the new A levels, the political rhetoric was all about “raising standards” and “rigour” and “curbing grade inflation” to provide “world-class qualifications”, all designed to raise the blood pressure for the hapless teacher and student.

When politicians and regulators met with chief executives of exam boards and selected subject experts to determine the direction of the “reformed” linear qualifications, teachers and senior examiners were notably absent. It wasn’t an auspicious beginning as the content and configuration of assessment objectives assumed centre stage.

It’s interesting that we’ve come to speak of the new specifications as “reformed”, a recognition that change was not solely about innovation, but recapturing elements of past courses that appealed to politicians educated pre-Curriculum 2000. When applied to meat and fish “re-formed” means that the natural fillets are somewhat mashed up and moulded into marketable shapes. For the curriculum, it could signal the reconstitution of literature to suit political, accountability and marketing ends.

Against such a backdrop of functionality, it was refreshing to read the consultation report from 2014 in which the discourse from Professor Mark E Smith, the consultation chair, was more about developing “interesting, appealing and ‘colourful’ specifications” - that learning and teaching might be pleasurable.

Appropriate depth of study

The biggest surprise was the reduction from 12 texts to eight and a compulsory unseen text to allow for “appropriate depth of study” - a stark contrast to the overpacked GCSE and augmented specifications in other subjects, and an overdue recognition that challenge and rigour don’t necessarily come from piling on the content. Previously, the timescale for AS and A level was so compressed that I always felt we were spending too much time on selecting bits for question themes and losing a sense of the whole text.

Prior to starting the new specification, it seemed as if there were open vistas of teaching time, but in the first run-through, it didn’t feel like that. The second run-through of a linear course has taught me the value of forgetting and relearning texts to provide richer knowledge and understanding of literature. There are still things I would do differently for the next cohort to make even more productive use of the post-mock period and run-up to the exam. At this stage, any additional material in terms of contexts and critics needs to be carefully judged to illuminate the text, not overwhelm it. And, indeed, the first report on the examination from 2017 highlighted the danger of using too many critics because, in the time allowed, the application of other views tended to be superficial.

Literature as a living subject

I like the rationale behind the compulsory inclusion of a post-2000 text - that it would “embed the sense that literature is a living subject”. And so it has worked out. There has been considerable enthusiasm in the department for the “poems of the decade 2000-10” because of their freshness.

The hook for me though was the introduction of crime fiction by two exam boards. The choice of the novel was the deal-maker as I compared a specification with Kate Atkinson’s wonderful Case Histories with another using PD James’ The Murder Room. Both novels do very interesting things with the genre and provide a contemporary setting, one more immediately recognisable to students than, for example, the Victorian-sensation-novel context of Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon . Incidentally, the latter is a much underrated novel, as I discovered when I got involved in writing lesson plans for one board.

In teaching the novels, I found the best way of understanding the crime scenes was to get groups to put together the plan of the well at Audley Grange and the garage as well as the Murder Room itself at the Dupayne Museum. Not quite CSI, but good active learning! 

PD James and Kate Atkinson have much to offer critics in terms of serious social comment, manipulation of the genre and meticulous plotting, as well as providing sheer entertainment for the casual reader. And with crime fiction now a selling point in a number of university courses, this step offers up-to-date materials and approaches.

The great selling point of some A-level specifications is that they permit in-depth study of one poet’s work or one period or school of writing rather than the study of poets within a theme. Keats was an accidental and enriching addition to my repertoire. Has any poet provided more deeply felt intellectual discussion of the poetic discipline? In the face of the increasingly “scientific” and functional ways our working lives are organised, we need contact with genuine passion for art and life which existed long before the word “passion” became a cliché on a Ucas form.

What is ‘rigour’?

Too much thinking behind exam reform rests on the assumption that to provide rigour you have to make students perform complicated combinations of tasks, hence the emphasis on comparison. In fact all the poets set for A level possess considerable complexity and aesthetic achievement -otherwise how could they have challenged accomplished academic critics for centuries?

The straightforward practical criticism of a poem from any period is actually a harder proposition than a comparative task. This is where the unseen text is “rewarding those students who read more widely”: the candidate who has studied a wide range of poems is able to appreciate the poetic art and complex subject matter. At A level, we can’t always teach by skills and numbers - we have to actually encourage and accommodate more wide reading.

Some boards have incorporated the unseen into a comparison with a known poem, or in conjunction with contextual and critical sources. One board sets a paper in which the first question employs two very brief, focused critical and contextual sources to illuminate an unseen prose extract taken from 1880-1910 or 1918-39. Such a task might seem more demanding than tackling a single unseen text, because of the range of materials to combine. However, the critical and contextual sources also support the reading to give a few clues as to how to structure the answer, so that what appears to be a complication actually assists all candidates in providing them with relevant material. It’s a very good task, echoing the best practice of the old Advanced Extension Award paper, and looks forward to what students will experience in studying English at university. 

Coursework and assessment objectives

There remains the vexed question of coursework, least trusted by government and regulators, most valued by students and most relevant to the management of the process of independent academic study. With increasing awareness that cheating can occur just as easily in the exam room as in non-examination assessment, maybe we should revisit the meagre weighting of 20 per cent for coursework.

Little has changed in coursework. At best, students continue to provide fascinating combinations of texts and refreshing ideas for titles. At the other extreme, some centres have taught both texts and then set the questions. Where is the independence for students in that? It’s not good for making literature a breathing, creative subject and it’s unfair on teachers prepared to adapt to any reasonable choice from candidates. If Ofqual were to make a really helpful intervention, then this would be the one. There should be a requirement for all candidates to study at least one text independently.

My remaining concerns rest mainly with the operation of the assessment objectives and the increased importance of context (AO3) in particular. Among my colleagues, there is a suspicion that the only context examiners are prepared to acknowledge is the social and historical. If this is the case then there will be a return to huge chunks of information not properly applied as candidates try to get in enough material to meet the percentage assigned to AO3. 

I continue to question the appropriateness of political micromanagement of the assessment process. The “reformed” specifications themselves have offered exciting possibilities. But unless we curb the excesses of the accountability framework, teachers will feel pushed into formulaic teaching, making the reformed A levels a very artificial and plastic experience for themselves and their students. It will prevent them using their subject knowledge in ways that could fulfil Professor Smith’s intention of making English literature more colourful and appealing and even threaten the long-term appeal of English.

Yvonne Williams is a head of English and drama in a secondary school in the South of England