This Wednesday, it’s National Writing Day. The UK publishes more books per capita than any other country, so there’s much to celebrate, but I think we need to be more ambitious in who we are aiming to inspire through these events. It’s easy enough to get students who already find pleasure in writing to crank out a short story on demand, or to get would-be bohemians to pay for a residential week composing romantic poetry in the countryside. But that leaves us with a rather limited range of perspectives to read.

Written literacy is empowering. It facilitates communication across physical and cultural barriers, and supports justice through the accessibility of law and argument. It should be democratising, too. The 1870 Education Act sought to remedy the class divide in literacy, in the face of resistance from the beneficiaries of child labour. However, a century and a half later, there remains an attainment gap for the economically-disadvantaged in English at key stage 4 leaving fewer equipped to write effectively and their social class underrepresented in public discourse.

Confidence in literacy

Of course that suits our latter-day industrialists who require a passive workforce lacking the confidence in literacy to challenge contracts or to get themselves heard by those with influence. The policy of compulsory resits for GCSE English is a last glimmer of the grand ambition for social justice realised in 1870, and an opportunity for educators to protect and advance the disadvantaged.

My project “Write On!”, supported by the charity SHINE Trust, has helped English-resit students succeed in the GCSE by reigniting their enjoyment of writing. It has provided an approach that feels different from their prior experience, engaging them with a chance to share their imaginings, and giving them the confidence to take pride in the writing they produce. Thanks to the generous weighting of creative writing in the reformed English exam, we have been able to put it at the centre of our curriculum.

We have provided students with low-stakes journals to remind them that writing is something that they can do without worrying about an assessment focus or their spelling, but just for the pleasure or the cathartic relief. We’ve used roleplaying games to resuscitate storytelling skills that had been suffocated. We have tried to demonstrate the fun of experimenting with vocabulary.

Self-expression

We all know that FE gives its learners a chance to reinvent themselves, but it also gives us the opportunity, as teachers, to reinvent English as the powerful tool of self-expression that it should be.

SHINE backs projects that aim to improve literacy for disadvantaged students. Their mission, according to chief executive Fiona Spellman, is “to make sure that every child is given a chance to succeed, regardless of their background or starting points. We are passionate about levelling the playing field between children from low-income homes and their wealthier peers, and helping all children to achieve their potential in life.” As far as I’m concerned, that is also the mission of GCSE-English resits; providing the extra time, help, and encouragement for our learners to catch up with those who had a head start.

Earlier this term, to mitigate against the potential slump in motivation for our students following their second mock and as the real exam days drew nearer, we had the last-minute idea to run a college-wide, GCSE creative-writing competition. We celebrated winners within classes, within faculties, and crowned an overall cross-college winner. We judged the entries on individual progress and their humour or originality; not just against exam criteria. With the playing field levelled, students who wouldn’t have wanted to even try in other circumstances were suddenly excited by the possibilities. To my amusement, we had complaints that students were sneakily working on their English in their other lessons.

What struck me most was the range of genres represented in the entries; from Tolkein-inspired tales of elven bowmen to slasher horror (no…stay by the car…don’t go into the woods…). One piece was so overflowing with unusual imagery it read like an avant-garde prose poem.

Preparing for work

The critics of the GCSE want to create the narrative that vocational students have no imagination and need to prepare only for their future working lives, in step with the 19th-century Russian reactionary Pobedonostsev who opposed broader education for working-class children because “the vast majority must learn to live by the work of their hands”.

Those teachers so ready to ignore history, and class struggle, and their students’ deeper needs, are missing out on the joy of witnessing the shy but thrilled smile as a hair-and-beauty learner reconnects with the love of making up stories she’d last felt in primary school, or the bemused smile of an outdoor-education student as you almost cry with laughter at his Burger King vignette, or the hopeful health-and-social-care student asking every day if the winner has been chosen yet.

It’s not always easy to face a group of students whose prior experience of education, and subjects like English in particular, has left them apathetic or even hostile. However, the rewards that come with a little perseverance and optimism are priceless.

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