English in the News
Below is a selection of articles which are archived online and may be of interest to NATE members. If you know of others please let us know. Keep up to date with our Twitter feed, too.
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- Authors aim to slash illiteracy - BBC, Saturday December 15, 2007
More than 500 leading authors have signed a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown urging him to confront childhood illiteracy.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Audiences 'lack education to understand classical plays' - The Independent, Thursday June 9, 2005
Modern theatre audiences are less able to understand classical plays than previous generations because of a declining knowledge of literature and history, Nicholas Hytner, director of the National Theatre, believes.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - At last, Obama meets Corbett in new English language exam - Times Educational Supplement, Friday June 4, 2010
US President and diminutive funnyman to feature in unit on spontaneous speechLink broken or innaccurate? Please report here - At five, a third of poor boys cannot write their names, report says - The Guardian, Thursday January 28, 2010
Almost three-quarters of boys on free school meals are failing to keep pace with their peers, official figures showLink broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Army has 'poor literacy levels' - BBC, Monday March 5, 2007
Half of Army recruits have the literacy or numeracy skills of children leaving primary school, a report by the Basic Skills Agency says.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Ariadne's thread - The Guardian, Wednesday July 25, 2007
Thousands of literary texts are now available online, all submitted by volunteers. Is this the most enlightened initiative since English studies was invented? John Sutherland reports. Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Are teachers choosing 'easy' exam boards? - The Guardian, Tuesday August 25, 2009
Will this week's GCSE results reflect students' hard work – or, as critics claim, efforts by teachers to find the 'easiest' exam boards? Warwick Mansell investigates - with a little help from NATE's Ian McNeilly.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Are books dead, and can authors survive? - The Guardian, Monday August 22, 2011
At the Edinburgh international book festival this weekend, Ewan Morrison set out his bleak vision of a publishing industry in terminal decline. Here's a shortened version of his argumentLink broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Apple's and pear's in danger - Times Educational Supplement, Friday March 3, 2006
Is this the pedants' revolt? Sticklers for correct punctuation were rejoicing today after a government body declared war on the greengrocer's apostrophe.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Appeals soar after Sats fiasco - BBC, Thursday December 18, 2008
Appeals against the marking of this year's national curriculum test papers in England have reached record levels after a marking "shambles".
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Appeals rise over schools tests - BBC, Thursday November 5, 2009
More schools have appealed this year against the results of the national tests taken by 11-year-olds in England....
Most appeals were made against the marking of English papers - and this is also the area where numbers rose the most. Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Appeal over Shakespeare lessons - BBC, Friday September 15, 2006
The Royal Shakespeare Company has claimed that "boring" lessons are putting youngsters in England off Shakespeare's work for life.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Anthony Horowitz fans gather to break a world reading relay record - The Guardian, Friday October 7, 2011
Antony Horowitz's new short story,The Double Eagle Has Landed is at the heart of a record-breaking reading attempt. [You can read the story yourself on the Guardian site]
Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Another honour for JK Rowling - The Guardian, Thursday April 10, 2008
Ian McEwan, JK Rowling and Khaled Hosseini have won the top prizes at the Galaxy British Book awards, which left both Nobel laureate Doris Lessing and glamour model Katie "Jordan" Price disappointed.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Angry parents accuse school of 'dumbing down' English by showing The Simpsons in class - Daily Mail, Friday July 16, 2010
A father has started a petition against 'dumbing down' after his daughter's school ditched literary classics in favour of The Simpsons.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Andrew Motion's dad – and the spectre of an art-free world - The Independent, Thursday June 9, 2011
An emotional appeal by the former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion to ring-fence arts spending during the current spending cuts.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Andrew Motion to write sequel to Treasure Island - The Guardian, Friday March 26, 2010
The former poet laureate takes Jim Hawkins back to the island in search of the lost treasure 126 years after Stevenson's storLink broken or innaccurate? Please report here - An A-level in Harry Potter: Experts fear ‘dumbing down’ as book becomes set text - Daily Mail, Saturday April 26, 2008
Harry Potter has taken his place alongside such greats of English literature as Shakespeare's Hamlet and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and is required reading for A-level English students.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Amazon Kindle users surprised by 'Big Brother' move - The Guardian, Friday July 17, 2009
Owners of Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader have received a nasty surprise, after discovering that copies of books by George Orwell had been deleted from their gadgets without their knowledge.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here - Alphabet block for some children - BBC, Friday February 17, 2006
One in six children in England struggles with the alphabet and even to write their own name after a year of primary school, government data shows.Link broken or innaccurate? Please report here