Hive Special Features

In the first of our series of special Hive feature articles, KS5 English Lead Sean Watson considers English curriculum design.

Literate English: How Curriculum Design Shapes Readers and Drives Results

Before I started teaching, I harboured Dead Poets Society-style fantasies of students falling in love with literature through sheer force of will and passion. In this idyllic picture, content is king – you teach brilliant literature to willing pupils, like putty in your hands. I took it for granted that inspiring content and great teaching naturally led to engagement and success. The realities of the complex urban comprehensive classroom and the competitive exam system are far messier, but also fertile ground for those who care about what we teach as much as how we teach it.

The last time the English curriculum in England underwent major reform, in 2008, the government argued that the priority should be knowledge over skills. Ministers suggested the need for broad cultural knowledge in English, noting that many students had grown up “without knowing who Miss Havisham was”. The intention was clear: to anchor English in a shared cultural literacy. Yet knowing who Miss Havisham is, without understanding what she represents within a wider literary culture, rarely produces confident readers, critical thinkers, or a lasting love of literature.

The argument was not without logic. The then Education Secretary – himself an English Literature graduate – believed that if we delivered inspiring content, understanding would follow. And so, a diet of rich literary curriculum was prescribed. The reality is that a deep understanding of English does not work like a checklist of characters. Literature is not mastered through recall alone, but through ways of reading, interpreting, and recognising patterns across texts.

Nearly two decades on, and with another curriculum review on the horizon, the same tensions remain. How much should English prioritise content, and how much should it foreground disciplinary thinking? How do we balance rigour with accessibility? And within a national curriculum framework, how much agency do schools really have? How do we navigate this within a marketplace of exam boards, all with different offers and boundaries for quantifying success?

This is where teachers’ instinct to be detail oriented are a professional virtue. If we care about equity, outcomes, and intellectual seriousness, learning to navigate a path through curriculum choice can be a key strength. While national policy sets the direction of travel, schools still exert meaningful control through one crucial lever: curriculum design – and, more specifically, the choice of exam board.

As I discovered, there is far more scope than we often assume. Thoughtful curriculum design can improve outcomes, broaden access, and ensure that we are teaching the course we are best placed to teach.

When I became Key Stage 5 English Lead in early 2022, the department already had a strong track record. Cohorts were usually small, fluctuating anywhere between ten and the mid-twenties. Our results at SMMA were consistently above the national average for the subject, but below our exam board’s average. In other words, we were doing well, but our grades were effectively capped by the cohort of students we were competing against. My working theory was simple: if we could outperform the cohort of a different exam board, we could exceed our previous outcomes.

There was also a broader perception problem, however. English A Level was seen as difficult, elite, and, for many, boring. This is an uphill battle familiar to many English departments. When a subject is mandatory at GCSE, prescribes Shakespeare, a nineteenth-century novel, and poetry about abstract wars, it is unsurprising that some students relegate it to the dusty classics shelf they plan never to revisit. This is also seen in a 30% drop in national take-up of the subject over the past decade.

The exam board we used leaned into the perception of difficulty. Closely associated with ancient, elite English universities, it offered a specification to match. While I value texts such as Chaucer and Coleridge, the academic demands of the course represented a sharp and unforgiving jump from GCSE. What was expected often resembled undergraduate-level work. As a result, English A Level had a public-relations problem; it was perceived as difficult and hard to do well in. All this prompted a simple question: what other options were available?

Exploring alternative boards revealed an uncomfortable truth. We were using the board with the most challenging grade boundaries in the country. Further investigation showed that around a third of its cohort came from independent, fee-paying schools – despite only around 12% of pupils nationally attending private education at post-16, double what it is at GCSE. Put simply, our students were competing against a cohort whose demographics did not match their own. Our pupils were trying to compete on a playing field, which was not level, and had gaping holes hacked up by hockey sticks.

Like it or not, the English examination system is a competition. Grade boundaries are set relative to the performance of each board’s cohort. So why place our students in a smaller, more elite pool when equivalent qualifications exist? This inevitably invites accusations of “gaming the system”. My response is straightforward: it is a game, and one we want to give our students the best chance of winning. Private schools have long made strategic choices – opting, for example, for iGCSE with lower grade boundaries and reduced content demands – and universities treat these qualifications as equivalent. When students report their A-level results to prospective employers or higher education institutions, no one asks which board they studied. Only the grade matters.

With that rationale, we surveyed the field. We ultimately chose the largest exam board in the country, which offers two Literature specifications, each with multiple choices of units within them, offering an array of text options. Strikingly, the specifications were structured around clearly defined genres. Studying Shakespeare through the lens of tragedy, rather than as an endlessly complex literary artefact, made texts more accessible without dumbing them down. Pairing Death of a Salesman with the poetry of Keats offered students a coherent sweep of four centuries of literature, unified by genre rather than chronology.

This approach is strongly supported by educational research, namely Genre Theory. The theory suggests that readers build understanding by recognising patterns across texts — such as structure, themes, and conventions — rather than encountering each work in isolation. As Martin and Rose (2007) argue, “genres are how people use language to get things done in the world.” Teaching literature through genre mirrors how confident readers naturally build knowledge, helping students develop sophisticated and transferable reading skills.

In contrast, our previous specification grouped texts under broad historical periods. While I admire The Great Gatsby, the unit it sat within – 1880–1920 American Literature – is not a genre. The conceptual thread for students was far weaker and more multifarious. By contrast, the genre-based Crime Writing unit on the new specification proved revelatory. Students had all read a crime text at GCSE, be it An Inspector Calls, My Last Duchess or Jekyll and Hyde. Studying Hamlet through the tradition of crime foregrounded questions of guilt, justice, and moral responsibility. Reading Atonement in the same unit – not an obvious crime novel – opened up fresh interpretations. The aim was not to narrow the meaning, but to give students a way in. Add to this writers such as Agatha Christie, the best-selling novelist of all time, and the course became intellectually demanding, coherent, and accessible.

When I presented the plan to the Headteacher, his optimism was such that he asked whether the new specification could be taught retroactively to our current Year 13s. Thankfully, I talked him down, but he did want immediate implementation for the incoming Year 12s. This was April. Rather than a leisurely year of preparation, we had a matter of months.

That urgency proved galvanising. Decisions had to be made, lessons prepped, and schemes of work written at speed. We were fortunate to have exceptionally enthusiastic colleagues, willing students, and gallons of coffee. Teaching a specification for the first time while learning it yourself is challenging, but it sharpens practice. As the cliché goes, the teacher often learns as much, if not more than the students.

Several years later and our first results were in. Had it paid off? The answer was an unequivocal yes. We achieved our strongest results as a department. As we had become accustomed, we outperformed the national average – but, crucially, this time we also outperformed the cohort average. As a result, the proportion of students achieving A*, A, and B doubled. All students achieved at least a C, a first. Most importantly, our students were now competing within, and outperforming, a cohort that more closely reflected their own circumstances.

We now have strong foundations, but the subject continues to grow. In the third year of the new course, our cohort has more than doubled, arresting the national slide. There is a renewed buzz around English. We actively recruit KS4 students through reading groups and enrichment activities, many of whom would not previously have considered the subject. English remains challenging – but it is no longer impenetrable.

As English teachers in a comprehensive setting, we do not want only the elite students. We want a broad intake, representing the full spectrum of ability, with whom we can help achieve great things. Because English is not ultimately about knowing who Miss Havisham is. It is about understanding her as an archetype, part of a literary culture, and a symbol within a genre. The former dampens curiosity; the latter ignites it.

Our job is not simply to transmit content, but to keep that reading spark alive.