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The Michael Gove File

Exam boards will set the texts, but they're restrained to Brit Lit for 20th Century.

It's typical Gove, he provides guidance and advice and waits for external agencies, schools and teachers to follow it because not following his guidance may mean poor results, which means OFSTED and eventually academies etc.
 
Yeah, I realised but various media outlets are basing it on OCR's choices aren't they? had a swift google, but couldn't find the source.
 
Page 4

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa..._data/file/254498/GCSE_English_literature.pdf

Students should study a range of high quality, intellectually challenging, and substantial
whole texts in detail. These must include:

 at least one play by Shakespeare
 at least one 19th century novel
2

 a selection3 of poetry since 1789, including representative Romantic poetry
 fiction or drama from the British Isles from 1914 onwards.

All works should have been originally written in English.
Within the range of texts above, the emphasis should be on deepening students’
understanding. The texts should be chosen with the key aim of providing students with
knowledge to support both current and future study.

To broaden their knowledge of literature, and enhance their critical and comparative
understanding, students should read widely within the range above to prepare them for
‘unseen’ texts in the examination. These unseen texts may or may not be by authors
whose works students have studied as set texts.



2
Short stories should not form part of this category.
3
Any selection published by awarding organisations should comprise no fewer than 15 poems by at least
five different poets, and a minimum of 300 lines of poetry.
Click to expand...

Guidance will be stuck to, as exam boards don't want to hack off Gove.
 
Yeah, I read that too... ;)

I was more wondering how far the 19th century texts strayed from this sceptered isle, and how any texts beyond the compulsory are included. I also note that English literature and language are separate and that it's the language GCSE that's compulsory. iirc I didn't take English language, just lit (seem to remember there was a language option though).
 
Cid said:
Yeah, I read that too... ;)

I was more wondering how far the 19th century texts strayed from this sceptered isle, and how any texts beyond the compulsory are included. I also note that English literature and language are separate and that it's the language GCSE that's compulsory. iirc I didn't take English language, just lit (seem to remember there was a language option though).
Click to expand...
I did both in 1989. Fairly sure language was as "compulsory" as they could make it at the time (ie you could still leave school without finishing fifth form, in theory).
 
yeah, lit has been the optional one for as long as i'm aware. at least since the eighties. if employers specify that you muse have grade c in english, they mean language.



OCR hasn't published the new spec on their website, yet. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a ubiquity of "Animal Farm", btw. Quality novels that are short and engaging... it's what's needed. There are alternatives to the american writers, but it's a ridiculous restriction to impose those changes.
 
_angel_ said:
I did both in 1989. Fairly sure language was as "compulsory" as they could make it at the time (ie you could still leave school without finishing fifth form, in theory).
Click to expand...
Same here (same year too). I *think* we did To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men, Romeo and Juliet and some other stuff which I can't remember now. In English Lit I only remember doing war poetry, so I don't know if the books were just done in English Language. Scary to think this was quarter of a century ago. :eek:
 
No it isn't. It's perfectly written. I read it at GCSE IIRC (though it may have been A-level). Knowing reading levels at my school though, it might prove too difficult. About half the pupils have reading ages two years below their real ages.
 
spanglechick said:
yeah, lit has been the optional one for as long as i'm aware. at least since the eighties. if employers specify that you muse have grade c in english, they mean language.



OCR hasn't published the new spec on their website, yet. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a ubiquity of "Animal Farm", btw. Quality novels that are short and engaging... it's what's needed. There are alternatives to the american writers, but it's a ridiculous restriction to impose those changes.
Click to expand...

Ah, well I probably did take it then. Don't really remember my GCSEs. Think I started smoking weed around then.
 
A woman from Brighton can't make enough. The Gove pin cushions are selling like hot cakes!

10402849_399558703516283_1954401646448025430_n.jpg


:cool:
 
Orang Utan said:
No it isn't. It's perfectly written. I read it at GCSE IIRC (though it may have been A-level). Knowing reading levels at my school though, it might prove too difficult. About half the pupils have reading ages two years below their real ages.
Click to expand...

"When vegetation rioted, and the big trees were king".

"And this, too, has been one of the dark places of the earth".

"He was an - extremist".
 
Even my quietly tory-voting big sister has posted something on Facebook hating on Gove (with an added comment, not just shared without consideration), first time I've ever seen her post anything remotely political (she teaches early years). I'm actually gobsmacked by this - if he's pissing off someone like her then he's really ballsing it up.
 
Just watching a documentary on Netflix about the education system in the US, and promoting charter schools as an alternative (goves 'free schools', in other words). It's like peering inside Gove's mind. The term 'the blob' even comes up, which is obviously where Gove got the phrase. Can't find a free stream of it anywhere, but there is a response to the film here:

 
Fozzie Bear said:
Radio 4 just ran a profile on Gove as part of their "broadcasting house" prog.

His favourite "rappers" are Wham and Public Enemy :confused:
Click to expand...
He is so far up the spectrum of nobtitude, you have to wonder if it's a strategy. Perhaps one he evolved at school: you remember those kids who somehow made themselves so eminently bullyable that they were able to dine out on a consistent broad streak of victimhood, almost as if by being such a bratty little cunt, they're not worth the bother of being unpleasant to.

Which is perhaps understandable in a schoolkid; rather less so in a government minister.

And then that's the other thing: he does seem awfully as if he is trying to right some perceived wrong of his own experience. It's telling that he's slightly younger than me, but seems to be harking back to a Golden Age of education slightly before he (and I) would have been in school, almost as if there is some desperate effort to wind back the clock to before his own schooldays, when everything must somehow have been better and nicer.
 
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What Gove is doing has precedents.
Pinochet pushed through the education law just four days before leaving power; it placed the responsibility for education in the hands of the private sector at the same time as allowing complete freedom to create educational centres. The result was the deterioration of the quality of education, while making it prohibitively expensive. Working class people now struggle to get into university and have to make do with municipal secondary colleges – in other words, a second class education. In 2006 the so-called Penguins movement (thus named because of their school uniform) mobilised half a million school students in support of the de-privatisation of education and the rescinding of the law.
Click to expand...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/sep/11/chile-coup-anniversary-pinochet
 
One of Andrew Neil's guests this morning, it was either Toynbee or the other Grauniad hack there, reckoned the Gove-May spat was him positioning himself to get fully behind Gideon for next year's possible leadership election against May. I'd never have thought Gove would want to be some other cunt's puppet.
 
stavros said:
One of Andrew Neil's guests this morning, it was either Toynbee or the other Grauniad hack there, reckoned the Gove-May spat was him positioning himself to get fully behind Gideon for next year's possible leadership election against May. I'd never have thought Gove would want to be some other cunt's puppet.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't have credited him with the self-awareness, but perhaps he realises that he just doesn't stand a chance as party leader, and is happy to back someone else on that basis?
 
A Goveian dream of how education should be. Look out for the school chaplain at 58 seconds, he is strangely familiar!

 
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This OFSTED mess is actually it, it's the thing that makes me never ever want to come near Uk education again.
 
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