Designing a coherent English curriculum
Written by: Claire Hill
4 min read
When the new specifications for GCSE English were published, the focus was on how to cover the content of the course in two years and how the skills of analysis, evaluation and comparison could be taught in a way that met the exam board requirements. The next question was how to embed these skills in Key Stage 3. At first, the process involved simply adapting the units of work in Key Stage 3 so that students could answer ‘GCSE-style’ questions based on the units already in place. This approach was in response to the speed of change and the workload required to create a new Key Stage 4 curriculum, leaving little time left to meaningfully develop Key Stage 3. However, it was soon clear that this would only result in a curriculum of disjointed units of work merely connected by the command words of the GCSE exam papers. There was no real sense of cohesion: units of work were episodic, with no clear sense of direction beyond approaching a text as they would for the GCSE.
We had to st
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This article was published in September 2018 and reflects the terminology and understanding of research and evidence in use at the time. Some terms and conclusions may no longer align with current standards. We encourage readers to approach the content with an understanding of this context.
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