Brief – but valid – Guardian editorial calling for changes to English teaching. “Too much of what is valuable about studying English was lost in the educational reforms of the past 14 years,” the paper says and that “ill-thought-through changes, which imposed a model more suited to science and maths learning on to the quite different disciplines of language and literature.” The editorial lingers on the effect that the changes have caused on A-level take-up of English and the consequent difficulties in recruiting English teachers.
One thing that the editorial mentions is Dominic Wyse and Charlotte Hacking’s The Balancing Act, which argues that children’s growing dislike of reading comes not only from modern technology but that evidence from the teaching of English (in primary schools) bears a share of the blame: “They believe a more flexible approach in classrooms, making more use of literature (initially children’s stories and novels) and less focused on grammar, would ultimately produce stronger talkers, readers and writers. The erosion of teachers’ autonomy should also be reversed, if enjoyment in language and ideas is to be strengthened.”