Literature Study Post-16 I

Problems and Pressure-Points

From Curriculum 2000 to the Post-2008 Curriculum

The introduction of Curriculum 2000, with its AS/A2 structure and the accompanying Assessment Objectives, had laudable intentions.

• To broaden the post-16 curriculum and thereby to bring it a little closer to continental models
• To address problems of retention
• To award students who wish to study only for one year at post-16

But there were problems from the outset, particularly in relation to assessment, largely as a result of too little time being allowed to implement the changes.

• There was a lack of clarity about the exact level of attainment that students were expected to demonstrate in the AS (first year) level.
• There were well-publicised problems in the first phases of marking
• It soon became apparent that students were now to be locked into a punishing exam-regime with tests or exams at over-regular intervals from age 14

In terms of English literature, other damaging effects were soon noticed.

• There was far less time for the dynamics of the triangular relationship between students, texts and teacher to find its own pace and power. The 'sacred space' and 'flexible time' notions explored above became seriously threatened. This was simply because of the pressure to prepare students for the three AS modules, which could be taken as early as January. This allowed little or no time for:
  • Introductory or bridging courses
  • Strategies to mark out and familiarize students with the territory and the learning and teaching styles that make post-16 literary study different
• The result was that the culture of 'teaching to the tests', endemic before post-16 study, seeped into it.

The pressure to prepare Literature students for early assessment was compounded by the nature of the assessments themselves. Two points call for comment.

• The decline in coursework assessment
• In the 1980s the Conservative government intervened to reduce coursework assessment from, in the most popular of the then Literature A-levels, 50% to 20%. Younger student teachers today are shocked to learn that the (50%) coursework requirements for that most popular A-level syllabus were for students to compile a folder of eight literary pieces of work, with one piece allowed as a creative response, followed by an extended essay ranging across any number of additional texts.
• Curriculum 2000 increased maximum coursework from 20% to 30% but spread over both AS and A2 with the effect of restricting coursework to just one piece of work in each phase, with, typically, the A2 essay being a comparison of a maximum of two texts and tougher penalties than hitherto for exceeding the word-count. It was hard to avoid the impression that broad, ambitious and independent reading was no longer valued.


• The impact of the Assessment Objectives on the teaching of literature.
• This was a story of gains and losses. It was widely applauded that students were required to demonstrate understanding of the importance of different interpretations of texts and of the contexts in which texts are written and understood. (See Eaglestone, 2001, pp.6-7.)
• But the Curriculum 2000 exam boards sent out confusing signals about the practical implications of these objectives for teaching and assessment. The way the questions in the exams were framed suggested that nothing much had changed and that 'context' can mean little or nothing. One centre was advised that the 'context' of a Blake poem from Songs of Innocence and Experience could be another poem from the same book.
• It became clear that students were being marked down for writing holistic and wide-ranging answers (as literature should naturally elicit), not systematically enough jumping through the particular objectives that each exam, in an allegedly systematic but actually often quite arbitrary way, was set up to test. Weaker candidates were being over-marked in an equivalent way. Teachers developed the habit of getting students to colour-code their practice exam-essays according to each appropriate criterion 'ticked' in particular paragraphs or sentences.
• Unsurprisingly many teachers of Curriculum 2000 literature had the feeling that they were in the business of teaching Assessment Objectives as much as students and texts. (For a cogent critique, see Atherton, 2003, pp.97-109.)

Student teachers should be encouraged to debate whether the study of literature lends itself easily or at all to an objectives-led model. Peter Medway (Medway, 2002-3, p.7) cites Lawrence Stenhouse who, arguing against the specifying of objectives in a subject like English, puts it like this:

• 'One of the main functional advantages of...(English) is to allow us to specify content, rather than objectives, in curriculum, the content being so structured and infused with criteria that, given good teaching, students' learning can be treated as outcomes, rather than made the subject of pre-specifications. Disciplines (like English) allow us to specify input rather than output in the educational process.'
• Medway (ibid.) adds: 'to engage appropriately in certain activities is to entertain the relevant desires and pursue ends that are internal to the activity; the activity is not just something you have to go through in order to get to something else, as a mere means to some more important end'.

With the first A2 cohort of the post-2008 curriculum being examined in the summer of 2010, it's too early to offer more than a partial account of the impact of the new literature A-level and of how centres have responded to it. But Barbara Bleiman of the English and Media Centre has published extremely helpfully on this matter in important articles (2008, pp.41-44; 2009, pp.18-21) and the optimistic tone of these articles, based as they are on careful scrutiny of the various specifications on offer, and on detailed if necessarily provisional feedback from highly experienced teachers, suggest that the outlook is very positive.

• But a great deal depends on how the various awarding bodies interpret and implement the new criteria and, in particular, on how they set and mark questions.
  The cynical will point to a very mixed track-record in these matters.

The concluding comments to Bleiman's latter article deserve quotation before we consider the detailed changes introduced in the post-2008 curriculum:

• 'I am optimistic that in two or three years' time more students will be arriving at university with a greater willingness to take their own initiative. They will have a stronger sense of enquiry and more confidence. They will take greater pleasure in reading books.' (Bleiman, 2009, p.21.)

The changes from the Curriculum 2000 criteria for A-level literature are, in summary, as follows:

• There are fewer modules for all subjects across the two years, four instead of six. This reduces pressure across the whole system.
• There are fewer Assessment Objectives (four) and the opportunity is there to mark them equally across any individual module, rather than having to isolate and weight particular objectives against particular answers (as in Curriculum 2000). As Bleiman says, this 'seems to be having the effect of putting them in their proper place' (Bleiman, 2009, p.19)
• The minimum number of texts studied has doubled from six to twelve and the range of texts required or allowed has also increased
• A post-1990 text is now required
• A critical texts can count as a text (in some specifications)
• Texts in translations are allowed
• Course-work, internally assessed, is up to 40%
• Students can now respond to texts in creative, re-creative, or transformative ways. The first Assessment Objective pointedly highlights the word 'creative' (mentioned nowhere in the AOs for Curriculum 2000): 'Articulate creative, informed and relevant responses to literary texts'.
• There is a specific and new requirement (AO3) for students to 'explore connections and comparisons' between texts and as AO3 goes on to connect this with 'interpretations of other readers' there is less chance of a very watered-down engagement with critical materials than before, as when Carol Atherton's centre was informed that 'different interpretations by other readers' could just mean students mentioning some class-discussion in their answers. (Atherton, 2004, p.32).
• The requirement to compare and connect, along with the increased number of texts required for study, should have a significant effect on the amount and the intensity of both primary and critical reading experienced by students. The need for 'stretch and challenge' lay behind these new A-levels and the new literature criteria seem to offer just that.
• As with all other subjects, the introduction of grade A* has led to the phasing out of the Advanced Extension Award, a single exam corresponding in a loose way to the old S-level paper, in place from 2002 to 2009 and for which English was the most popular subject.
• It was an exam structured in such a way as to be open to candidates from all three A-level English specifications, though candidates from Literature easily outnumbered those from the other two A-levels. Some saw it as a hopeful pointer to a future in which English will no longer be a splintered subject at post-16. Its demise is a matter of regret.