Teach Secondary 14.4

skills, perhaps emphasising more progressive ideals of pupils’ capacity to experience literature, and not just to know about it. ” (my emphasis) We can see this shift by comparing typical English literature exam questions at different times: “ Choose two episodes in this play which you find most amusing. Describe them briefly and show how in each episode Shaw obtains his humorous effect. ” – 1957 UCLES O Level English literature paper [Foundation] “ What vivid impressions of George and Lennie’s relationship does this passage give you? ” [Higher] “ How does Steinbeck’s writing here vividly convey the relationship between George and Lennie? ” – 2011 OCREnglish literature papers The 1957 question assumes an intimate knowledge of the whole play, allowing for some personal response, while also demanding knowledge of literary techniques. The instructional verbs throughout the paper are varied. In this question alone, we can see there are three – ‘choose’, ‘describe’ and ‘show’. By contrast, the 2011 questions are more or less repeated throughout the whole paper – variations of ‘ Describe your personal, vivid impressions of an extract ’, or ‘ Identify these literary techniques ’. All papers and questions in the 2011 examwere based on extracts which, in theory, could see pupils pass without themhaving read the entirety of the source text they’re supposedly meant to have studied. More significantly, perhaps, is the 2011 papers’ formulaic instructional ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alka Sehgal Cuthbert is a teacher, independent academic and writer, and co-editor of What Should Schools Teach? – Disciplines, subjects and the pursuit of truth, 2nd Ed . (£25, UCL Press) language. For Foundation tier pupils, the focus is on personal expression with little reference to the actual literature. For Higher tier pupils, the emphasis is more on literary techniques – yet neither do full justice to the imaginative and linguistic richness of literature. This suggests that anyone seeking to improve the quality of exams – and also their public status, perhaps –might want to start by first looking at what assumptions regarding subject knowledge, pupils and pedagogic IN BRIEF WHAT’STHE ISSUE? A comparison of older O Level and modern day GCSE English literature papers shows how the cognitive complexity involved in sitting the subject’s exams has reduced over time. WHAT’S BEING SAID? Academic researchers have shown how the English literature exam now seems to prioritise consideration of a text’s literary qualities and students’ experiential reflections, over deep knowledge of the text itself and analysis of literary techniques. WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING? Sweeping changes to how exams were administered, following the introduction of GCSEs in 1986, have ultimately resulted in exam questions becoming less robust and rigorous as time has gone on. THETAKEAWAY We should carefully examine how the evolving composition and priorities of exam boards may have served to alter the content and academic value of the GCSE exam papers – and consider whether it may now be time to re-adopt a more scholarly approach to syllabus development and revision. approaches are being embedded in today’s English literature exams. became increasingly exposed to the economic and political pressures of the outside world. See, for example, the 1994MEGGCSE syllabus for English, which states: ‘ The syllabus has been designed to offer to all candidates equal opportunities to demonstrate their attainment, whatever the Level, regardless of each candidate’s gender, religion, and ethnic and social background. ” Here, we see the vocabulary of equal opportunities and multiculturalism enter the domain of school knowledge, as embodied by exam boards. It would be strange to think that the intellectual substance of examinations would be unaffected by such changes – yet this was the position of the Qualification and CurriculumAuthority in 2004, after carrying out an evaluation of examinations from 1980 to 2000, from which it concluded that accessibility had improved, while the demands made had remained unchanged. Instructional language However, just four years later, when reviewing forms of assessment between 1887 and 2007, Cambridge Assessment wrote of English examination papers: “ Earlier question papers required a much closer knowledge and memory of the prescribed text…Later question papers gave more emphasis to a different set of 13 teachwire.net/secondary H O T TO P I C