GCSE English is too pale, male and stale – I have an idea to change all that

Pearson, one of the three leading exam boards in the UK, has warned that urgent reform at GSCE level is needed. If English (as a subject) is to survive at both A-Level and higher education, it needs to be less pale, male and stale.

Sharon Hague, managing director of the examining body, said that worrying figures reveal only 7 per cent of students answer questions on a text written by a woman. Literature also remains disproportionately focused on works by white male authors, with fewer than 1 per cent of GCSE candidates studying texts by non-white authors. So, what are we doing wrong?

I understand the struggle to engage students – and to keep them interested. I have spent the best part of the last 15 years working in schools, universities, prisons and referral units with pupils who would otherwise be considered disruptive, neurodivergent or underachieving.

My aim in those spaces is to try to encourage them to see poetry and literature as something greater than a daunting analytical exercise, or a puzzle that needs solving; and rather to see it as an essential part of human expression and connectivity. I’ve seen first hand how exposing students to texts that they see their lives reflected in totally transforms their relationship to literature. It’s a welcome sign. A way of saying: your life and the place you come from matters, too.

But it is tough going to make these texts accessible. If I were to take in texts by, say, any of the Romantic poets, then I know many of the pupils would struggle with the language and phrasing of Keats or Byron. If I took in work which centred on mid-20th century American history or the antebellum South then, again, I’d run the risk of losing the group.

None of this is to suggest that students don’t have the capacity to comprehend ideas being put forward through more canonical texts. But, early on in their relationship to literature, I believe that it would be far more engaging to offer books which relate to them directly, or that speak into their current world view.

After all, the canon will always be there, so why waste our current moment on historicising, something which academia in the UK seems almost obsessed by – the idea of looking back but rarely looking at the now?

Taking a more contemporary approach would act as a more substantial gateway into the world of poems and stories – and enhance each student’s ability to connect with lives outside of their own.

The added pressure students feel to also “get it right” hinders their experience with literature. This is perhaps truer of poetry, which pupils often feel intimidated by. They assume every poem has a specific “answer” they need to somehow uncrack or decode, from a text that’s often considered turgid and opaque.

How literature is perceived is partly shaped around those formative school years, but we can’t dismiss the role wider culture plays in discouraging or encouraging young people – and adults – to read.

One of the questions I’m often asked by students is, “How much money do you make as a writer?” I’ve always found this to be somewhat telling of the way young people are conditioned to think of careers – in that before you do a job you love, do a job that pays well. This feeds back into the idea that writing as a job is regarded as antiquated, dying and redundant. What with the development and application of AI technology and other digital mediums, many students question the risk writers will face in the not-too-distant future.

If we broadened our understanding and appreciation to include live literature, spoken word, performance poetry and dramatic monologue – alongside more traditional works – then surely pupils would engage with those texts and see them as a means of having their lives and sensibilities validated. It could even foster a new affinity with (and love of) English.

Poets such as Danez Smith, Richard Scott, Fran Lock and Joelle Taylor all write about sexuality and the body in ways that have proven to win young readers over. I often take into class Outbound by Hieu Minh Nguyen as a way of examining place, alienation and possibility – the poem never fails to stir up a rich conversation.

There is a plethora of poets and writers both in the UK and internationally whose work focuses on such pertinent issues, so why are secondary school pupils being denied the chance to encounter work which they can find themselves in?

The late poet Gboyega Odubanjo wrote: “Ignore the authorities / for they cannot help and there is work to be done” – which reminds us that what gets put in front of us isn’t always the best option.

We, too, forget that literature is art – meaning it’s collectively owned, but individually experienced. To suggest that we need young people to “get it right” – or to imply that if they fail an exam, then that automatically means they’re terrible at English – is to do a great disservice to not only the English subject itself, but the power of our imaginations.

So, when stats are telling us that entries to A-level English have dropped by 35 per cent in a little over a decade – and the number of undergrad students studying an English subject fell by nearly a quarter between 2012 and 2021 – we need to think outside of the formulaic curriculum.

If English is to survive, not just for those who wish to pursue a career in letters, but for all of us who use language to communicate and express ourselves, then it’s vital we offer the subject the revamp it deserves and needs. We must revive our love for poems and stories; and hold in far higher esteem the living writers who labour to bring those worlds to us.

Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator