Early-Modern England (c. 1500 -1800) kept a firm grip on societal hierarchies. A ‘system of thought’ called ‘The Great Chain of Being’ bound individuals in place, a primitive, ‘social-class-like structure’ that placed God at the top, followed by the King/Queen, nobles, commoners… down to non-living entities such as rocks (at the bottom). Therefore, ‘ambition’ equalled sin because desire meant a person may move up the Great Chain and disrupt God’s natural order. No no. One has one’s place, so one must stay put!
Welcome to my English classroom, February 2026. I’ve just finished chatting to a student about his exam performance, and I feel a deep resurgence of the Early-Modern ‘Great Chain.’ This learner and I have been fighting through a GCSE text when he asserted, “Justin, how do they expect a dyslexic student to understand this sh**?”
The archaic language in the text shackled my student
Not God per se, but our exam board (a ‘god’) prescribes these ‘texts’ for the students’ GCSEs; these deities mark our exams and, in their defence, are following national curriculum guidelines from the reform(s) of 2010. Headed by Michael Gove (at the top of ‘The Chain’), the reforms were to address the following:
- 1. ‘Employers… are often dissatisfied with school leavers’ literacy…’
- 2. ‘42% of employers need to organise additional training for young people…’
- 3. ‘We believe making [the exams] more rigorous will prepare students properly for life after school.’
- 4. ‘It’s… necessary to introduce a curriculum that gives… teachers greater freedom to teach in the way they know works…’
(Government Policy: 2010)
I understand Gove’s rationale. I recently left education, but I returned because I missed the dynamics of teaching. It was apparent, though, that workplace literacy levels are lacking. I noticed this while reading application forms and interview material; the essentials of spelling, grammar and punctuation are inadequate. Therefore, Gove’s ‘rigour’ will challenge students in different ways and, consequently, teachers must prepare students to access these demanding texts. Moreover, ‘reform’ will safeguard against a recrudescence of subpar literacy in the workplace: students will leave school more competent in fundamental skills for occupations and further academic study – such as comprehension and ‘decoding’ challenging language, evaluative and analytical skills: all transferable expertise that mean poor literacy won’t restrict students’ ambitions; they won’t be manacled to one, single pathway.
Furthermore, I welcome Gove’s ‘freedom’ for schools. My students lap up my lessons watching The Simpsons to learn creative writing skills; I relish reducing my classes to toddlers with episodes of Noddy when discussing PC Plod and ‘monosyllabic plosives’. And all my students delight in bastardising my lesson via a Shakespearean expletive: you ‘bawdy flap-mouthed bum-bailey!’
English is hard
Schools need this ‘freedom.’ The students benefit.
But…
How we examine students governs how we teach them. Yes, The Simpsons and Noddy are good fun, but my students will be sitting over six hours of English exams wrestling with Victorian prose and decoding Shakespearean verse. Alas, a sexy description of Bart’s ‘Springfield’ and a secure grasp of a plosive won’t cut it.
Students cannot circumvent Shakespearean and Victorian syntax/vocabulary, and they don’t relate to the mundane topics the exam boards have chosen for their English exams. The grammar is too elevated and complex, and the language ‘topics’ bear little-to-no relation to my learners’ lives: cycling, libraries, surfboarding, traffic congestion, weather, workplace, toddlers, eating habits…
My learners crave gaming, county lines, mental health, social media, celebrity influencers, fashion, relationships, music, drug and alcohol awareness – the hot topics of their daily experiences. And, crucially, to borrow from Sarah Fletcher’s HMC Report, ‘the success of students in school… is influenced by the way they interact with the learning process’ (2021). My students don’t ‘interact’ with these texts. Thus, with respect to Gove’s ‘rigour’, my students don’t yearn for a love of literature, care who Shakespeare was, and they couldn’t give a fig about surfboarding as they live smack bang in the middle of Newcastle.
Neurodivergent students come off even worse. The Guardian’s Sally Weale reports approximately ‘seventy per cent’ of neurodivergent students are ‘educated in mainstream schools,’ with absences due to ‘…anxiety, sensory overload and inadequate support.’ Moreover, Weale asserts ‘one in six’ neurodivergent students have been absent from school this academic year (2026). Therefore, for me, this raises immediate questions. Firstly, could the curriculum’s ‘rigour’ play a hand in the absences of neurodivergent GCSE students? Secondly, do these Victorian and Shakespearean texts instead subjugate students with additional needs? And thirdly, to return to Fletcher, ‘might there be a connection between mental ill-health [and] the school curriculum’ (2021)?
It certainly feels inequitable.
So, is there common ground?
Can Gove’s reforms coalesce with the needs of our young learners to improve English in the workplace?
I think so.
Firstly, we must reach out to students, teachers, parents, psychologists and neuroscientists about the needs of young people, research that would challenge the ‘rigour’ of teaching ‘sacrosanct’ Shakespearean and Victorian texts at GCSE. This research would emancipate our teenagers from unnecessary barriers. Students could then study contemporary texts that correlate with their lives, and there’s a redemption in the act of recognising this. Clinical psychologist, Dr J. Coleman, warns us ‘the world… today is very different from the world as it was… [and] we should keep in mind the social context in which [teenagers] grow’ (2021). Thus, ‘contemporary texts’ are still ‘rigorous’, and they will still challenge young people. More importantly, however, the GCSE English curriculum would engage young people and contribute to their social and cultural needs for modern-day, diverse Britain.
Secondly, the one-model-fits-all approach to GCSE English must go. Society is not that binary, and this myopic obsession with superannuated texts neglects the diverse needs of our students. NATE, the National Association for the Teaching of English, argues ‘the current English curriculum is outdated, rooted in 19th-century models, and fails to address the needs of 21st-century learners’ (2025). However, ‘19th-century models’ aside, the curriculum must also tailor exams to students’ destinations. Students not going to university or entering ‘white collar professions’ have different needs from students who are. The former will arguably need greater instruction in writing emails and raising invoices; the latter will need a greater degree of analytical and evaluative skills for ‘sophisticated texts.’ It doesn’t mean, however, that Shakespeare and Dickens need to troop out of the school cupboards, thesaurus and quill in hand to ensure ‘rigour.’ On the contrary, a text related to current affairs could still be ‘rigorous’ and would likely engage students more than the current unrelenting bromance.
My students are ambitious
And yes, it’s only right the GCSE curriculum is also ambitious. We owe them that. But these ‘ambitions’ must be symbiotic. We must understand the students’ daily lives and have foresight to resist the perdition of Victorian and Early-Modern England.
Of course, I’d love my students to ‘dig’ literature, study Dickens and flirt with Shakespeare. But that’s a fallacious belief, especially when you factor in children who have many barriers to learning. Furthermore, we have a moral responsibility to provide opportunities for students who have diverse needs. Society is diverse, so our curriculum must reflect this. It’s time for a serious review of the GCSE English curriculum’s ‘Great Chain.’
It’s time policymakers release the shackles of bygone days.
