Teach Secondary Issue 13.6

Whose language is it, anyway? There’s a stark disconnect between how SPaG is taught at primary and how we approach it at secondary, warns Jenny Hampton ... I n July this year, my professional and personal lives collided when I receivedmy daughter’s Y6 SATS results with a raw score and a scaled score (out of 120). Paper 1 of the SATS is a grammar, punctuation and vocabulary test marked out of 50. My genuinely humorous daughter – an avid reader who has a brilliantly wide range of vocabulary – achieved 35 marks. I’mnot sure if it was the English teacher or the parent inme who was more intrigued by those missing 15 marks… And so, for the first time, I actually attempted paper 1 of the Y6 SATSmyself. For most of it, the English teacher in me nodded and thought ‘ Yes, this is useful, this is what they need to know; yes, this provides a shared language – word types, sentence types, tenses... ’ But who is actually sharing the language? Crisis in confidence This year, 72%of students reached the expected standard when paper 1 was combined with the spelling test, which means 28%of students are quite simply not sharing the language. So what about the secondary school English teachers who will be the next stop for these outgoing Y6 students? Are they sharing this language? Because, if I, an English teacher of almost 20 years and mother of a Y6 student, only properly examined the SATS papers in question on results day, howmany other English teachers aren’t aware of the language our students supposedly enter our classrooms with? Could it be that we’re “Whyarewe constantlygoing back toword types in Y7 toY11?” ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jenny Hampton (@brightonteacher) is an English teacher, literacy lead and former SLE (literacy) awarding grade 9s in Y11 to students whenmany of us couldn’t really state with confidence what a ‘noun phrase’ is? Every English teacher will be familiar with what a preposition is, but many won’t be as confident explaining what a ‘preposition phrase’ is, and will happily (albeit quietly) admit to not using that precise terminology when teaching, assessing, feeding back on writing, or indeed when analysing text. And yet, both these phrases andmore formed part of the paper 1 taken by Y6 students across the country. So why are we constantly going back to word types in Y7 to Y11? Why are we returning to the basics of sentences?Why is correct use of tense virtually always part of our feedback for creative writing in each year across KS3 to KS4? A lackof sharing The reason is that it isn’t working. The language isn’t being shared. The knowledge isn’t being retained. In the summer of 2023, The national average GCSE grade for English language was 4.5. In the highly likely scenario of both primary and secondary assessment undergoingmajor changes in the coming years, there’s no risk of any babies getting thrown out with the bathwater, given our current progress inmaking young people effective and accurate writers, or sparking their interest in grammar. When the Joint Council for Qualifications published its A Level trends in the summer of 2023, English Language was among those subjects showing a decreased number of entries, while English Literature saw a slight increase (though this was in the context of a steady decline in numbers). Taught with joy It’s indisputable that we need language to discuss language. It does, however, need to be a consistent language, accessible by all teachers and students – not one that shifts and changes formacross different settings and Key Stages. Should you find yourself in conversation with one of this year’s many incoming Y7 students, ask themwhat a ‘relative clause’ is. Should you then find yourself in the company of a secondary school English teacher, ask themwhat an ‘adverbial’ is. The answers will be interesting. This type of querying and discussion is what we need to be doingmore of, and not just within our schools.We should be asking similar questions of the wider profession, within universities and even among employers. When it comes to grammar and punctuation, students need to possess real skills and employ a shared language that’s been taught and learned with joy. Our educational landscape is shifting – let’s hope that something suitably seismic happens in terms of howwe use language to talk about our language. 71 teachwire.net/secondary E N G L I S H