From the start, the current (“reformed”) English GCSE was the government’s qualification, and Ofqual’s.

Too often, the reading material is uninspiring - and pitched too far above the “lost third” to give them a reasonable chance of gaining a grade that will get them on to a vocational course. 

And now we hear that schools are dropping A-level English, as fewer and fewer students pursue what the GCSE has convinced them is a “dull” and “tedious” subject.

The government’s much-vaunted notion of “rigour” has led to narrow conformity. Witness the many pages of sample mark schemes that are exhaustingly detailed, atomistic and excessively prescriptive - perfect for the novice teacher. Workload-heavy. But not much room for professional judgement there.

The tragedy of GCSE English 

English literature texts are safe, predictable and assessed by memorised acceptable interpretations. 

That the government needed to compel schools to take its reformed qualification is an indication of its many drawbacks. More than ever before, schools have become exam factories, striving to reach often unrealistic floor targets. 

Thus teaching and learning within the highly prescriptive specifications have become a tunnel-vision experience.

The most obvious culprits could be the awarding organisations - the exam boards -  themselves. One board immediately capitalised on the insecurity of the teaching profession and their masters.  I remember the introduction of tests for Year 7 through to Year 9 at one launch session. 

To be fair, they were not the only ones. These test packages may well have fuelled the tendency in a number of schools to start their 11-year-old students on the flight path to GCSE success - something that Ofsted now deplores, so much so that it makes strenuous efforts to ensure that key stage 3 is not just a rehearsal for GCSE.

Feeding the data monster

But should we lay the blame for the assembly-line experience solely at the collective doors of the government, its thinktanks, Ofqual, Ofsted and the awarding bodies?

Or should we look at the effects of performance management, with its over-emphasis on outcomes (test results) and all the excessive data-collection imposed on schools and teachers? 

Feeding the data monster means getting trapped in endless spreadsheets, so that pupils’ progress can be plotted, and every slip from their predicted grades can be met with an instant and transformative “intervention”.

The huge problem with English - and even a qualification as predictable as English language - is that pupils don’t progress along a smooth upward incline. 

While maths and science may produce clear diagonal lines on progress charts, English is a messy affair. This is always very difficult to explain to line managers who are not English teachers. A couple of years ago, I read a study by D Royce Sadler, which confirmed my experience.

It said: “Student development is multidimensional rather than sequential, and prerequisite learnings cannot be conceptualised as neatly packaged units of skills or knowledge. Growth takes place on many interrelated fronts at once, and is continuous rather than lockstep.”

In other words, if pupils don’t grasp all the elements in essay-writing at once, then they will not progress to the next level, and may even slip down. 

A trek through a mountain range

Most “learning journeys” will resemble a trek through a mountain range, not a brisk stroll up a cliff face. Teachers just have to hope that most of their pupils will peak at each data-drop.

Or they have to engineer outcomes that are more predictable. 

There are several ways of doing this. The first is to test, retest and test again. But is this education or training? 

A study conducted back in the 1990s reveals a truth that is even more relevant today: “The use of repeated practice tests emphasises the importance of the tests, and encourages pupils to adopt test-taking strategies designed to avoid effort and responsibility. Repeated practice tests are thereby detrimental to higher-order thinking.”

This is worrying enough. But teachers and pupils aren’t the only ones with a stake in GCSE results. 

These high-stakes qualifications are even higher stakes for the bodies now taking charge of schools, such as multi-academy trusts, which operate far more along business lines than educational ones. Their very survival rests on results. 

Their response is that of business organisations, and so they are more likely to buy into partnerships and test writers, who attempt to systematise thinking and performance to maximise results.

There are online resources, such as student handbooks for GCSE English language, which exemplify this highly organised - and ultimately shallow - strategy. 

Essay writing is a ‘tick-list exercise’

The first section in one such “quiz” is multiple-choice. The first two questions get students to find the received meaning of inference. Then students are asked to identify which sections in the exam paper will use inference. It’s a focus that mechanistically puts the testing apparatus first.

The defenders of this approach might well argue that this test helps with metacognition, so that students can apply the right skills to the right question. And no, that’s not so terrible. All of us teach to the test to some degree. 

But the excessive focus on the test questions provides a very low level of metacognition. Even essay responses - the most free-range of tasks - are structured using acronyms such as FANBOYS for (mainly) coordinating conjunctions to lead paragraphs. And what preparation for essay writing could be complete without A FOREST? 

Examiners’ hearts sink when they see these acronyms and others at the top of answers. They know that even something as free-range as essay writing has become a tick-list exercise.

The Testing Dementors

The Department for Education’s usual response to criticisms of the reformed qualifications is that the new GCSEs are more rigorous, prepare students for the world of work and were implemented after a long and careful process of reform.

This response in itself raises the question of what kind of working world the government predicts for its young citizens. If the GCSE in English language exemplifies employment, then it’s a long, tedious tick-box affair.

But it’s nearly Christmas, and all the best stories end in hope. There are other voices than the mechanistic ones of the test writers, which I hope will rescue education in the next decade.

Of course, there are teachers who have managed to redeem the experience to some extent. I have also been privileged to participate in subject association and exam-board consultation forums, where I first heard Dr Francis Gilbert, of Goldsmiths, University of London, speak. 

His paper, “How teaching to the test depresses results”, shows that English exam candidates do better if they have had a more balanced education, which places a lower premium on battery testing.

So let’s make the next decade one in which we take on the functionalists who would turn English into mere exam fodder. 

Let’s rescue reading and writing from the jaws of the Testing Dementors. And let’s give our students the creative and reading skills they will really need to capitalise on the post-Brexit world we are about to enter.

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