The Calm Before the Storm? English from the 1970s into the 1980s

Notes from English and Its Teachers by Simon Gibbons (2017)

In this chapter Gibbons presents the period from the mid-1970s to the start of the National Curriculum as a high point for English teaching. The Bullock Report supported a renewal of importance of English across the curriculum. Until 1988, it was a period of freedoms for English departments to collaboratively develop curriculums and classroom learning activities that could encourage children with issues such as race, class and gender. It Enabled English to be about personal growth but also about a child’s relationship with culture and society. During this period teacher-based research projects evidenced a sense of passion and purpose. Gibbons examines the 100% coursework English GCSE (and its demise) as well as the National Writing and Oracy Projects.

• Despite “grumblings” of Right, English was in the hands of the teachers. No pressure from direct state intervention into curriculum and pedagogy.
• Gibbons: “The period from the 1970s into the 1980s has been described as one when, for an English teacher, it was easy to teach and to innovate.”
• Expanding the Progressive Curriculum
  • Inner London Education Authority English Centre (later English & Media Centre) under leadership of Michael Simons, of Commision 7.
  • The English Centre helped to make study of media part of mainstream English work. Along with BFI.
  • Work of Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams all important.
  • Richard Hoggart – Uses of Literacy
  • Raymond Williams – The Long Revolution
  • Work through NATE and Joan Goody was increasing profession’s knowledge of multicultural texts. Goody set up the Caribbean Teachers’ Exchange and was highly influential in the growth of the literature of other cultures in the English classroom.
  • Growing interest in gender. Tyke Tyler became a typical text.
  • Gibbons: “Although issues of class were already important to pio­neers of the new English in the 1960s, race, ethnicity and gender were now also prominent in a child-centred view of the subject.4 English was a political subject in the way it was framed by progressive thinkers, and as such it reflected the evolving politics of gender, race and class where arguments were becoming more sensitive and more intense as the 1970s progressed.”
  • Reactions against progressive teaching. Gibbons: “It wasn’t a difficult argument to make; surely if the subject was driven by a child-centred, mixed-ability ethos, and was purporting to address issues of class, culture, society, gender, race and ethnicity, how could it possibly be paying proper attention to basic skills? And what was happening to the traditional canon of English literature? The caricature of the 1970s English teacher – liberal minded, eschewing grammar and great literature in favour of expression, personal response and relevant texts, was one that those on the right wing of educational thinking were quick to portray.”
• The Bullock Report
  • Largest investigation into English teaching since 1921’s Newbolt Report.
  • 600 page report. Gibbons: “The enquiry was motivated by the kinds of sentiments expressed in the Black Papers over the supposed fall in standards in English, particularly in the context of comprehensive schooling, but if there was a political desire for a report that would lambast the state of progressive English teaching and its concurrent detrimental effects on the basic standards of reading, writing and spoken English, this was not fulfilled, as indeed it would not be when future Conservative administrations formed committees in the hope that a back-to- basics version of English would be recommended.”
  • Report did not support teaching of formal grammar. Suggested experiential learning of language.
  • Report found that standards weren’t falling. Found no evidence that creative and progressive education was threatening basic skills.
  • Gibbons: “It powerfully made the case for better resourcing for English departments and more specialist English teachers to be employed in schools, and came down on the side of mixed-ability teaching (whilst acknowledging the complexities of this type of pupil organisation).”
  • Gibbons: “The overall impression was that A Lan­guage for Life fully endorsed and vindicated the progressive approach to the teaching of English that had developed through the work of LATE and NATE to the Dartmouth conference and into the 1970s.”
  • Report drew on the work of the Schools Council Writing Research Unit and referenced James Britton‘s theories (derived from D.W. Harding – 1937) about the development of writing in children.
  • Recommended that all schools develop a language across the curriculum policy. Gibbons: “It’s likely that, in many institutions where policies were produced, they remained simply as paper exercises, and probably impacted little on practice; secondary schools are often graveyards for cross-curricular initiatives given such institutions’ size, complexity and very nature.”
• The Vauxhall Manor Talk Workshop
  • Becoming Our Own Experts (1982)
  • At Vauxhall Manor School in London a working group was formed to consider the importance of oracy on the development of children’s learning. Work supported by Racheal Ferrar, the leader of the oracy project in ILEA.
  • Essentially a project led by teachers.
• Schools Council English Projects
  • Gibbons: “it would be unfair to say that A Language for Life had no concrete impact. And though many of its recommendations went either unheeded or unimplemented, it had a powerful effect in that it endorsed a humane, child-centred, progressive model of English.”
  • Britton, Burgess, Martin, McLeod and Rosen – The Development of Writing Abilities 11-18 (1975).
    • Gibbons: “The research for this lengthy project had in fact taken place between 1966 and 1971, and was followed by a four-year development project during which individual teachers and groups put into practice some of the research team’s key findings. The project itself was cross-curricular, with the research team analysing over 2,000 pieces of writing from students across over 60 schools, with the ultimate aims being to reconceptualise how school writing was categorised and to propose a new model that would describe writing and its development.”
      • Writing described in terms of its function (transactional, expressive, poetic).
      • Writer given a spectator or participant role.
      • “The continuum constructed as a frame for analysis placed transactional writing/participant role at one end, passing through expressive writing to poetic writing/spectator role at the opposing end.”
    • Gibbons: “The painstaking approach to the collection of data and the analysis of scripts was symptomatic of perhaps the most serious attempt to throw light on school writing that had hitherto taken place. Read in conjunction with Language, Learner and the School, Language and Learning and Understanding Children Writing (Burgess et al., 1973), which emerged from the 1971 NATE conference, and put in the context of the Bullock report recommendations, it can be seen that many of the central ideas around growth English and its peda­ gogy and practice were perfecdy placed to affect oral and written work across the curriculum.”
    • Schools Council work in post-16 teaching.
      • “literature in the sixth form remained stubbornly Leavisite in form and approach”.
      • English 16-19 Project ran from 1975-1978, led by John Dixon.
      • Key findings in Education 16-19: The Role of English and Communication (1979).
      • Gibbons: “The most significant impact of the 16-19 project was probably the introduction of A-level courses in English language, media and communications. Its impact on literature teaching has been viewed as minimal as ‘only a limited liberalisation of approaches took place’ (Snapper, 2013, p. 54).”
• English into the 1980s
  • Leading role of the English and Media Centre.
    • EMC resources:
      • School Under Siege (1979)
      • The Island (1985)
      • Changing Stories (1984)
      • Making Stories (1984)
    • Materials for Discussion series:
      • The English Curriculum: Gender (1985)
      • The English Curriculum: Media (1985)
      • The English Curriculum: Poetry (1987)
    • Gibbons: “The range and breadth of materials produced by the centre reflected a creative time for English teachers and departments, and when moves were made to radically transform the later years of secondary schooling with a revamped system of exam­inations, there was scope for English teachers to extend the creativity and richness of the curriculum for all students across the secondary age range.”
• Development of 100% Coursework GCSE
  • Introduction of GCSE was “hugely positive move”.
  • Gibbons: “The GCSE opened up the study of literature for examination purposes to students of all abilities.”
  • First taught in 1986. A single exam system for all abilities first recommended by the Waddell committee 10 years earlier. Not until 1984 and Sir Keith Joseph.
  • Gibbons: “The 100 per cent coursework GCSE genuinely offered the opportunity to create an experience for students from 14-16 that enabled them to develop their abilities in English and be assessed in a way that rewarded their true potential.”
  • By late 1980s and early 1990s two-thirds of 16 year-olds were taking 100% coursework English GCSEs.
  • Gibbons: “It was a brief period, but one that many English teachers look back on as a golden age, recalling as they do the hours of work students would put in on redrafting pieces to include in their final folders, the rigour of the school and area moderation meetings (described in Gibbons and Marshall (2010)) and the fact that these were as much about professional development for the teachers as they were about agreeing standards. The workload for English teachers was significatly increased with 100 per cent coursework assessment, but the reality is that few complained of the burden given that what they saw was a humane assessment system which worked to the benefit of their children.”
• The Untimely Death of 100% Coursework
  • Ended in 1991. John Major announced a cap of 40% coursework assessment – following discussions with right-wing thinktank the Centre for Policy Studies and initially set at 20%.
  • Save English Coursework campaign set up by Mike Lloyd. In survey of 4000 English departments 95% firmly in favour of max weighting of 20% exam and many not in favour of an exam.
  • Schools Council superseded by School Curriculum Development Committee in 1984.
  • National Curriculum Council established in 1988. Gibbons: “Although members of these bodies may have been teachers at some point, and certainly those working on English groups within the NCC had this pedigree, the bodies them­ selves were in effect quangos, and its members essentially civil servants. Before this centralisation began to take hold, however, English teachers had what might be seen as their last real opportunity to engage in profession-wide, officially endorsed, projects that reflected the point to which progressive, growth English had come by the end of the 1980s.”
• National Writing Project and National Oracy Project
  • Perhaps last centrally-funded initiatives that genuinely involved teachers and NATE.
  • Margaret Meek, Helen Savva, Sue Horner (went on to lead English team at QCA), John Richmond, Douglas Barnes. ▾
  • Thomas Nelson drew together outcomes from the Writing Project:
    • Audiences for Writing (1989)
    • Becoming a Writer (1989)
    • Responding to and Assessing Writing (1989)
  • National Oracy Project ran from 1987 – 1993.
  • Gibbons: “The National Oracy and Writing projects were predicated on the notion – as was the ethos behind the work of subject associations like LATE and NATE – that teachers should be involved in investigating and seeking solutions to problems they saw in their own day-to-day work.”
  • Oracy project steered by Andrew Wilkinson (who coined term Oracy in 1960s). Also Douglas Barnes.
  • Oracy publications:
    • Oracy Issues newsletter
    • Talk journal
    • Occasional Papers: Oracy and Special Educational Needs (1992)
    • Teaching Talking and Learning (1990-1993)
  • Gibbons: “Both these projects represented a high point in the model of curriculum devel­opment”.