NATE has issued a detailed response to the government’s consultation on curriculum reform, outlining its vision for a more inclusive and forward-thinking approach to English education.

NATE argues that the current English curriculum is outdated, rooted in 19th-century models, and fails to address the needs of 21st-century learners. It emphasizes the importance of fostering creativity, cultural awareness, and critical thinking while equipping students with essential digital, visual, and media literacies. The organization also advocates for English to be taught as a humane discipline that promotes empathy, diversity, and meaningful communication.

Among its key recommendations, NATE calls for a curriculum that embraces cultural diversity by integrating texts from a broader range of traditions and perspectives, alongside traditional literary studies. It highlights the need for greater focus on creative writing, encouraging students to express themselves innovatively and critically. The response also critiques the current assessment system, arguing that the dominance of high-stakes, terminal examinations limits both creativity and inclusivity. NATE proposes a shift toward teacher-led assessments and flexible pathways, including Functional Skills qualifications and vocational options, to better support all students.

The decline in English A-Level uptake — down 35% over the past seven years — is a pressing concern. NATE calls for a rebalancing of post-16 studies to include more contemporary, inclusive content that resonates with diverse student experiences. It also underscores the need for greater emphasis on oracy and communication skills, ensuring that speaking, listening, and collaborative learning receive the recognition they deserve across all key stages.

NATE’s response further highlights the importance of supporting underachieving students and those with SEND, urging the government to invest in proven interventions and resources. The integration of technology and digital tools in teaching is another critical focus, alongside calls for empowering teachers with greater autonomy to shape curriculum and assessment practices.

For NATE, these reforms are vital to creating a modern, inclusive English curriculum that motivates young people and equips them with the skills they need for future success.

Curriculum reform in English – NATE’s view  

The principles driving NATE’s work in general and this response to the Government consultation on review of the curriculum in particular are very clear.

NATE considers that education should…

•  motivate young people to be communicative, co-operative, independent, resilient & ambitious

•  equip them with habits of independent learning for lifelong leisure, work and relationships in a    digital, globalised and media-manipulated age.

•. enable them to handle diversity, difficulty and dissent – and to develop active and empathic citizenship.

•. provide work, study and creative opportunities and pathways for all, whatever the academic attainment, talent, preference or ambition.

NATE considers that English for the 21st century should…

…develop from the current adaptation of the late 19th century/early 20th century model defined by a top-down imposition of a monoculture shaped by an earlier age of imperial certainties. That monoculture was transmitted by means of print literacy and formal written communication. Both of these remain important and essential components, but they need to be complemented by digital literacy and visual literacy. These are essentials if young people are to be effective citizens and creators in an age of multi-media communication. Cultural diversity has made available a wider repertoire of communication for young people (and older people) to affirm identity and fulfilment, making cultural fluidity as important as social mobility. There is a social need for young people to discuss difference, divergence and conflict in terms other than those they may encounter in mainstream and social media.

For English to meet these 21st century needs it needs to be understood as a humane discipline: one whose humanity derives from understanding the deeds, thoughts and feelings of individuals and groups, and whose discipline is in its understanding that all forms of communication, especially in language, create unity and division, convey truth and falsehood and can do these sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. 

Such a view of Education generally, and English particularly, would be advantaged by a shift from political steerage to subject-specialist professional influence in a national curriculum authority, possibly along the lines of the QCA.

1. A revised National Curriculum for English

The English curriculum needs to be agreed and sorted first, and by the educational community coming together with government, awarding bodies, universities and subject associations and the regulator to devise, plan and then to deliver a range of assessment tools best fitted to the curriculum – not the other way round.

The English qualifications at GCSE and A level do not sufficiently support a curriculum delivering the knowledge and skills required for further study or employment.

• The curriculum through EYFS to KS4 should show clear lines of progression in what students should know, understand and be able to do within and at the end of key stages.

• A revised National Curriculum needs to reflect the importance of providing some students with an alternative programme of study and assessment to the end of KS4. Some of these students struggle to gain access to GCSE whilst other students might require greater challenge than is currently on offer. In short, the programmes of study should provide differentiated content, targets and expectations in order to allow all students to succeed and attain appropriately. Revised subject content in Functional Skills qualifications might provide more accessible and relevant programmes of study for students working towards a level 2 qualification.

• The model and content of English within the National Curriculum should reflect those elements of English that have formed part of the subject’s scope and its appeal to students e.g. drama, media, film and digital studies. There needs to be more emphasis on drama-based pedagogy and a digital repertoire as tools for exploring poetry, prose and non-fiction, in addition to plays, and as a stimulus for writing.

• There is very little opportunity in English for students at all key stages (but progressively so) to develop creative skills and independent, innovative ways of thinking, making and understanding, which is exacerbated by the exclusion from the list of Foundation subjects within the national curriculum e.g. Drama, Media Studies, Expressive and Performing Arts. The English curriculum needs to work in partnership with subject specialists in drama, media and film studies. 

• The exclusion of the study of texts from different cultures in the programmes of study for the secondary key stages narrowed the English curriculum and provided fewer opportunities for students to be aware of and to respond positively to different cultures – particularly those with a post-colonial and ongoing social relationship with Britain.  A diversified English curriculum would help students and teachers alike to discuss, reflect on and explore matters of race, identity, belonging, cultural evolution and migratory trends that are, otherwise, topics shaped and distorted by journalism and social media. This would help to restore the traditional commitment of English to personal and social development through the study of language and literature.

• Student motivation and engagement have been diminished by a trend towards technicist description rather than personal response to language and literature. PGCE colleagues report an increasing pattern of English lessons with little allowance for students to speak or be creative, and literature study reduced to identifying a small range of ‘devices’. This owes much to a false binary of knowledge vs. skills, where a ‘knowledge-rich’ dominance inhibits the skills of interpretation, inference and response.

• English is pre-eminently a creative subject: it should involve students in ‘reading the world’ and expressing their responses in talk and writing.    Students of art and music are expected to create original work but there is little recognition that students of English may themselves be creative in speaking and writing. Creative writing should be developed in English courses at both GCSE and A level.  

2. Assessment of a revised National Curriculum for English

The assessment cart has been leading the curriculum horse for far too long – and for too little genuine or positive effect. There is too much statutory formal assessment at both KS2 and KS4, and its dominance within the school context means that too much time and effort is devoted to preparing for and practising these assessments. 

The best assessment is that which least interferes with or diverts from focused, continuous classroom and curriculum learning.  A programme of valid, moderated and accurate teacher assessment – continuous, periodic and end of key stage – would do much to release the pressure and the fear of negative accountability that schools and teachers currently feel.

The 2014 revision of the GCSE English specifications imposed narrower, less relevant and less accessible subject content on all students taking GCSE in an un-tiered and 100% terminal examination. Specifically, Different Cultures reading, Media texts and Spoken Language Study were removed from English, and world texts from Literature.

• The child’s learning journey should be seen as continuous between Early Years and 16+. This demands greater levels of communication and curricular collaboration between key stages, including pre-school. Assessment needs to be personalised, differentiated, formative and diagnostic, and it should be grounded in a curriculum model of what each learner needs to know, understand and do to make progress.

• The assessment system in the primary phase needs to be based on regular and frequent formative assessments of each child. The child’s teacher and any other relevant classroom professional should be at the forefront of such an assessment system – in partnership with parents/guardians and academic/professional stakeholders.

• Greater resources need to be made available to schools so that they can provide a full range of proven and effective catch-up, additional or extension lessons/teaching. Tackling underachievement in KS1 may be expensive but its value is in relation to the costs of disillusioned, discontent and disruptive students in KS3 and KS4.

• At Entry level and Level 1 there is a range of qualifications available for students to take when they are ready to succeed. For instance AQA have a pre-GCSE suite of assessments at three levels within their ‘Step Up to English’ programme. Linked to the NC programmes of study and to GCSE Subject Content these assessments provide evidence of progression and attainment in KS3 and 4. Similarly, revised Functional Skills qualifications offer progressive accreditation for Entry to Level 2 (GCSE equivalent).

3. Skill components of English, Key Stage 1-Key Stage 4

Reading

The reading requirements in the programmes of study and the assessment and qualification of English should more closely reflect the changing and varied nature of cultural diversity within and outside the contemporary secondary English classroom.

• Teachers and students should exercise greater freedom in the selection of study texts within both key stages, helped by Examination specifications at KS4 providing centres and students with a wider programme of prescribed reading.

• In primary there appear to have been some improvements in reading standards but these are judged by test results and probably demonstrate that our teachers and schools are getting better at teaching to the test rather than focusing on the more important task of developing eager, fluent, enthusiastic and life-long readers.

Writing

• Provision in the teaching and assessment of writing needs to move away from sterile writing frameworks at word, sentence and text levels.

• The teaching of writing needs to be made more creative, flexible and linked to reading. Children need to engage with and enjoy writing different texts for a range of readerships and purposes. They need to write at length, from a range of stimuli, to experiment and to write for both real and indicative contexts and for different purposes and audiences.

• Accuracy and secretarial aspects of writing need to be taught explicitly and progressively at the point of need and not imposed before the child is ready.

• Creative writing needs to be understood as a way of bringing reading, writing, criticality and creativity together. Recreative work is a way of showing understanding of a text; reflective writing on one’s own work is a way of bringing language and literature study together (stylistics).

Speaking and Listening

• Oracy, student choice, individual research, as well as wider extra-curricular and collaborative learning should be accorded greater importance. A spoken language and communication focus on presentation/debating skills and the use of Standard Spoken English does not support oracy within the curriculum nor does it reflect the kind of spoken language communication required for future study, employment and citizenship.

• The teaching and assessment of Spoken Language Communication needs reform and reinvigoration. The findings and recommendations of the Oracy Commission should be incorporated into any revised curriculum. In English, speaking and listening should regain status within GCSE. 

4. Specifics of Primary (Key Stages 1-2)

There is a need to re-plan the KS1 testing and assessment system to allow for greater diagnostic and pedagogic insight. The strong focus on preparing pupils for the EGPS paper at the end of KS2 skews the curriculum content, particularly in Y5 and Y6. Pupils learn, for example, about ‘fronted adverbials’ and the ‘present perfect tense’ at the expense of crafting a piece of creative writing and experimenting and playing with language. Implementing checklists of devices to include in their writing does not lead to discernment about effective use for purpose and audience. “Naming the parts” does not necessarily help them to use the parts. 

Primary schools and teachers in KS2 particularly have given significant classroom time to aspects of personal development and life skills. Unfortunately the preoccupying focus on end of key stage tests in Y6 has reduced the time available for such broader enquiry and teaching. 

The pressure of Ofsted accountability that overhangs the primary school is difficult to resist and results in a narrower pedagogy and test-focused curriculum in KS1 and KS2. Teacher Assessment of all curriculum areas should be reintroduced to balance learning and assessment and allow teachers to respond to the interests and capabilities of their pupils.  

Reading

• The main purposes of reading are pleasure and understanding. Current practice prioritises the mechanics of decoding words rather than engaging with pleasure, meanings, purposes and effects. The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check is not a stimulus to motivation for reading for enjoyment through a broader and more balanced interpretation of the reading process e.g. the ‘Searchlights’ model. The emphasis on phonic decoding as the foundation of reading is narrow and one-dimensional.  English language and literature communicate experiences, ideas, feelings and attitudes more engaging than vocabulary lists or sound-letter correspondences.  A reading habit focused on reader response to these is more conducive to personal and social growth than identifying  ‘devices’, however expedient that may be as a measure of ‘knowledge’.

• The KS2 assessment framework has come to drive the upper KS2 curriculum, causing it to be skewed in time and focus. The stand-alone grammar, punctuation and spelling test at the end of KS2 should be replaced by ongoing teacher assessment of these elements.

• The KS2 reading paper is problematic. Historically there used to be two papers, one aimed at more able readers and one for pupils working at the expected level. Now, the more demanding questions are woven into a single paper that is the dominant focus of preparatory reading. There needs to be a greater emphasis on reading for enjoyment, for learning and for life: on the range and the variety of reading they undertake in and beyond school. Promoting reading for enjoyment in the primary years needs targeted resourcing, a renewed national focus and an emphasis on engagement with books and authors. School libraries, book events and visits by role-modelling adults should be a part of supporting any revised programmes of study. 

• There is no KS2 assessment of oracy and therefore, spoken language is given less status than reading and writing and most primary teachers report that they don’t have time to spend on developing oracy skills when trying to cover curriculum content.  Collaborative talk within the context of structured play, group work and dialogic teaching practice should have higher status within English teaching and learning in the primary phase.

• In English, there is very poor continuity via assessment (KS2 SATS to KS3). Assessment criteria/performativity metrics are dictating the curricular/pedagogic approaches.

• There should be a stronger emphasis on media texts in order to support pupils to navigate the ever-changing world around them.

Writing

 Writing in English needs to re-focus on writing as a process, with greater attention to organisation and structure through drafting and redrafting over time and over a range of writing types. 

• Not all writing has to be approached in the light of final product criteria. Writing can also be provisional, formative, tentative and reflective, subject to modification according to thought, feeling or reader response.

Speaking and Listening

It is as important to speak to learn as to learn to speak. As in adult work and life, talk is the prime initial medium of communication, and can be sufficient in itself to convey thoughts, attitudes and feelings, as well as to prepare for written versions of such communication.

• Imaginative and structured play involving, for instance, role-taking, improvising, problem-solving and negotiating social and cultural conflict in KS1 and 2 can do a great deal to help children’s personal and social development.

5 Specifics of Secondary (Key Stages 3-4)

Greater emphasis needs to be placed on meeting the needs and the aspirations of the full range of students. We need a system that rewards and recognises what young people know, understand and can do at age 16, not an assessment system that leaves many young people feeling that they have failed and that further study is not for them. 

• Monitoring of individuals’ progress suffers from a lack of continuous, formative assessment within or at the end of KS3. The answer to this does not lie in a reintroduction of a terminal examination but in more rigorous, standardised and continuous teacher assessment, possibly including periodic and terminal assessments as part of a monitoring programme, and possibly building on the Assessing Pupil Progress (APP) initiative.

• Additional and innovative pathways would be preferable to continuous reputation of print literacy ‘basics’. Social Literacy should form a key element within the study and experience programmes that link to the students’ interests and enthusiasms. These might develop from partnerships with local employers, community activists, intergenerational initiatives, faith groups, multicultural organisations or sporting and recreational organisations. Practical, work-based programmes should augment and find a context in which literacy, numeracy and other traditional subject content might be taught and understood alongside a wide range of personal and vocational skills.

Reading

• A clear and specific programme of study designed for, and appropriate and relevant to, students in KS3 would include (in English) a programme of reading choices (including YA titles), opportunities for writing at length and for real purposes and readerships, more opportunities for collaboration, group work, drama, cultural studies, speaking and listening and spoken language study. The programme should be broad, relevant and age and content appropriate and not provide a vacuum colonised by rehearsals of GCSE protocols and rubrics.

Writing

• The teaching of writing has been largely determined by the nature of its assessment at GCSE. Writing needs to be taught across the curriculum so that separate subject discourses are taught and developed within the various subject disciplines. Writing in English needs to re-focus on writing as a process, needs to offer opportunities for greater variety, length and purpose and needs to give greater attention to organisation and structure through drafting and redrafting over time and over a range of writing types, rather than the increasing trend towards short pieces of writing scaffolded by templates such as PEE and DAFFOREST.

• There should be recognition of the limitations involved in assessment.  Setting unseen, disembodied 35-minute writing tasks in a formal, terminal GCSE examination is a model of writing that exists nowhere in the real world. The assessment of writing needs to be fit for contemporary study, employment and life. 

• The teaching of writing has become a matter of drill, test practice and grammatical feature-spotting to align with those elements that are regarded as characteristic of text-types and thereby evidence of student attainment. Students are not writing at sufficient length and show little enthusiasm for creativity. 

Speaking and Listening

Speaking about personal ideas, attitudes and feelings needs greater status, as does speaking for different audiences and purposes. Foer most young people, as for most adults, responses to what they have heard or read are most easily rendered through spontaneous speech. Making this spontaneous personal engagement with different kinds of learning or social experience should be an integral part of learning and of citizenship.

• Paired discussion, small group discussion and whole class discussion including the teacher can establish a communicative culture and a rehearsal of material for later written communication.

6. GCSE Assessment

The time is right for a thorough review of the qualification programme at the end of KS4. The content, structure and assessment methods of the current GCSEs are anachronistic in the twenty first century when evidence of collaboration, confidence with spoken language, ability with digital and social media communication and independent learning are the key requirements for study, employment and life. The curriculum needs to offer differentiated pathways, greater relevance to contemporary life and employment and more opportunities to experience learning in a ‘real-world’ context. Equality of opportunity means that the curriculum, its assessment and its potential pathways can and should be differentiated to meet the needs of the full range of learners. Teachers and schools should have the power and the means to adapt their teaching and assessment to ensure that all students are offered a relevant, broad curriculum – one that meets their learning needs, their talents and interests, their cultural heritage and values, and which develops their experiential and emotional capital.

GCSE English Language 

• English Language needs to be a linguistically informed study of language in society. ‘Knowledge about language’ (KAL) was a core element of the 1989 National Curriculum for English, widely welcomed by professionals and academics for offering an academically informed study of language in personal and social life.   However, KAL has been dropped from the curriculum in favour of a prescriptive view of ‘grammar’ inconsistent with modern linguistics.  In Ofsted’s 2022 Curriculum Review Report for English, the term “grammar” is used 14 times, but “linguistics” appears only twice, and then only in the list of references.   The current curriculum does not awaken children’s natural interest in language as a social phenomenon.  

• The content of GCSE English Language contains compulsory ‘literary non-fiction’ and nineteenth century texts but omits contemporary media and digital texts.  The English curriculum as a whole requires greater curricular scope to experience a diversity of text types, authors and of approaches to literary and non-literary texts.

 GCSE English Literature

• The curriculum needs to offer a wider range of texts, both canonical and contemporary, studied in a way that pupils can relate to their lives, cultures, histories and heritage. The current content, over- weighted towards nineteenth century English canonical texts lacks relevance and interest for many students. This curriculum fails to connect with the diverse knowledge and interests that many children bring to school and has contributed to a 35% decline in recruitment to English A level subjects over 7 years (NATE 2021). 

• Knowledge and skills are circumscribed by GCSE requirements. Hence, much teaching time is spent on short extracts from texts of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, at the expense of reading full texts or of students following their own reading interests.

• The content and assessment of poetry in GCSE Literature is not well planned to engage student interest. Greater choices of texts and revised assessment models including pre-release and 7-day assessment tasks would help to reinvigorate the teaching and assessment of reading in English and improve the take-up of English at A level.

• The content of GCSE English Literature needs to reflect contemporary writing more consistently. It is anachronistic in its over-representation by texts rooted in the imperial past and consists of ‘British’ writing rather than texts that have been written in English in different jurisdictions or which have been translated. This predominance of ‘British’ literature and cultural capital marginalises the voices, experiences and perspectives of diverse authors, and of diverse students. This was exacerbated by the revision of GCSE English Literature which removed popular non-British texts e.g. Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, A view from the Bridge and of texts written in a colonial and post-colonial context inside and outside Britain.

7. SEND

Some funding programmes, for example, Pupil Premium, have attempted to improve provision and attainment for the groups of disadvantaged students. The curriculum and assessment system needs to offer incentives and rewards to children who make personal progress despite the challenges and disadvantages they face. Children with special emotional and behavioural needs and disabilities, and looked-after children, need to have their schooling re-appraised in a revised curriculum. The processes for identifying and meeting the needs of young people with SEN(D) are slow, and inadequate. Problems exist at curricular, pedagogic and institutional level but the main problem is chronic underfunding especially for classroom support staff.

• The move towards terminal examinations and an intense examinations period impacts all, but especially those with SEND.

• A revised curriculum should spell out the requirement for schools to provide catch-up programmes with proven effectiveness e.g. Reading Recovery

• The Phonics Screening Check’s focus on decoding discrete words, including pseudowords, is especially inappropriate for learners with SEND or those learning EAL.  All students, and particularly SEND/EAL, need multiple strategies to make sense of language, especially when trying to understand, and communicate in, a new language.   

• The current GCSE English Language programme does not adequately address the needs of the full range of students at the end of KS4. Many EAL learners would benefit from a broad English curriculum incorporating Language and Literature as one subject.  Such courses existed until 2012, when they were deemed insufficiently rigorous. 

• Reformed and revised Functional Skills qualifications might prove more relevant and accessible and a better preparation for further education and employment for some students in KS4. The risk is, as happened in the past, that vocational pathways lack the status and the perceived value of more academic certification at GCSE and A level. A programme combining academic with applied and vocational qualifications appealing to a wider student cohort  at KS4 might serve their needs, but parity across the various pathways will be vital to the credibility and success of any pre-16 vocational offer.

• Consideration might be given to the introduction of a differentiated KS4 English qualification that recognises the achievements and progress made by students for whom English is a second or additional language.

8. Post 16

Curriculum and assessment reform instituted more than a decade ago categorised A level English Literature as ‘rigorous’ and a suitable preparation for university but devalued the other A level English subjects of English Language, English Language & Literature, and Creative Writing (the last was withdrawn).   This, coupled with students’ disenchantment with GCSE English, has resulted in a 35% decline in recruitment to English A level subjects over 7 years (NATE 2021). The post-16 curriculum needs to be reformed and rebalanced.  See the proposal described in detail in the NATE publication text-message: The Future of A Level English (2005). 

There is a need for programmes of study that form and build on clear, progressive links in knowledge, understanding and skills within and between Key Stages 3, 4 and post-16. Currently there are insufficient links in subject content e.g. in language study, between the key stages. In addition there needs to be clearer and more explicit opportunities for A level students to anticipate the independence of Higher Education and to develop their readiness to undertake less teacher-directed and closely supervised work.

• Qualifications at 16+ and 19+ in English subjects should include a greater proportion of self-directed learning and non-examination assessment in line with practice in FE, HE and the workplace.

• There is a case for broadening the curriculum offer at A level – to bring it closer to that available through the International Baccalaureate.

• The introduction of Level 3 Vocational qualifications (AGQs) has helped to offer students alternative study pathways.  

• Other Level 3 study – beyond A levels – should provide opportunities for students to develop their team-working, communication and collaborative skills. These courses should also help students develop confident oracy and interpersonal skills as well as fluent, accurate and flexible skills in reading and writing for the work and leisure.

• Best practice at post-16 provides students with time and opportunity to develop a range of transferable skills for further study, life and work. Examples include the growing popularity of the Extended Project Qualification and the availability of courses in critical thinking in preparation for employment and citizenship.

Level 3 (AS, A level & T level)

Some commentators and educationalists argue that the programmes of study at A level are too narrow for post-16 study. Others point to the depth of study and demand offered by traditional A level courses. The introduction of new technical qualifications offers additional options for post-16 students. Motivation is usually strong of course because the students have joined their courses voluntarily.  

• AS qualifications need to be re-imagined and re-constituted with a new intention and status. They do not offer much to the post-16 agenda as they stand.

• The A level qualifications would benefit from more opportunities for self-directed and independent study.  The NEA components of iGCSE English as used by international schools stimulate exceptional quality work from the most able as a substantial step towards study in Further and Higher education. 

• The feasibility of T Level in writing/communications would be welcome. There is a media production T Level, and this and writing would likely be complementary although the media course doesn’t foregrounds technical production elements rather than writing.

• Technical qualifications should develop through close partnerships with a range of HEIs, employers and vocational training providers.  A casualty of recent educational reform has been the loss of work experience programmes in KS4. Such experiences offered students insights into the world of work and a range of occupational choices, as well as enhancing  social and personal development.  In-course work or study placements with appropriate Level 3 credits would help students gain first-hand, relevant insights into HE studies, apprenticeship and employment options.  The knowledge and skills developed by technical courses should prioritise independent study skills training, work and study placements, extended research/project opportunities, voluntary work e.g. Project Trident and resourced and credited gap year opportunities with a range of high-status agencies e.g. British Council

9. Teachers’ professional judgement and accountability

Recent alterations to ITE entry rotes, together with the corporate pedagogies of MATs and reliance upon outsourced Powerpoint lesson resources have had the combined effect of reducing teachers’ sense of professionalism. Teachers need power and freedom to identify and provide appropriately demanding and relevant curricular content, assessment and qualifications for their students and within the context in which they teach them.

• Ongoing teacher assessment – moderated and validated – should contribute to the overall KS4 assessment of students. Terminal examinations might then be fewer, slimmer and might take a proportionate place within the student’s attainment profile.

• Moderation and validation should be based on exemplars for departmental standardising as a means of professionalising teachers in assessment priorities. In addition, CPD from providers with credible qualifications and experience should be at least an annual, if not termly, funded offer.

• To a great and a disproportionate extent. Progress 8 has a deleterious effect.  The accountability pressures mean that young people are too often fitted into courses and assessments at GCSE for which they have little interest and few chances of ‘success’. These students’ experiences reveal what they can’t (yet) do, know or understand. 

• Ofsted has proved to be a blunt instrument and fails to recognise how many schools and teachers add value to their students’ experiences and progress in a range of ways that are not measured by statutory or external testing and examination.

• Schools working in areas of significant deprivation and/or with high percentages of students experiencing additional challenges and difficulties need to be assessed contextually. They need to both support and learn from partner schools working with similar levels of deprivation and educational and social challenge.

10. Technology

Subject English will inevitably need to reflect major developments in technology such as AI, learning media such as YouTube and personal devices such as smartphones. New classroom and pedagogic technologies will help students across the range of attainment (and those with specific learning difficulties) gain better access and satisfaction from their schooling

• Assessment and qualifications are likely to be digitalised.
• Distance and remote learning are likely to become increasingly relevant particularly in post-16 programmes.

Further Reading

NATE 2021: The Decline in Student Choice of A level English. Teaching English 24. https://www.nate.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/NATE-Post-16-position-paper.pdf)

 Hodgson J. et al, 2013, Phonics and Early Reading.  https://bit.ly/2qq7VIi

 Meek M 1988. How Texts Teach What Readers Learn. Thimble Press

NATE (2005) text-message: The Future of A Level English.  Available at: https://bit.ly/future-A-English.

0-16+: different phases, but one individual throughout – Communication, language & learning: NATE’s vision for English 2030