GCSEs are too white-centric, teachers told

Marking schemes for English exams lack racial diversity, curriculum expert tells schools

GCSE English exams “uphold whiteness” and award students for saying “white is beautiful”, teachers have been told in a national body’s seminar.

All English teachers were invited to attend the session on “the lack of diversity in English teaching” last month by the National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE), which counts a third of secondary schools as members.

The online lecture told teachers to highlight the concepts of white privilege, white fragility and whiteness studies, and to “embed” British Empire when teaching 19th-century texts.

Lesley Nelson-Addy, an English curriculum tutor at Oxford University, told teachers: “Intentionally or inadvertently, the [2015] GCSE assessment changes in both English language and literature negate the apparent need to explicitly engage with issues pertaining to race and racism, representation in literature and society, while at the same time upholding whiteness under the guise of universality.”

Ms Nelson-Addy displayed a marking scheme for the 2017 English Language paper by AQA, which is still used for practice and mock exams.

She said the mark scheme “invites students of all abilities … to attain marks in exchange for reaffirming white skin as a key feature of beauty, and therefore social advantage” and criticised how its suggestions for answers “does not at all refer to colonialism or colonial injustice, that the text’s plot rests on”.

The paper asked students about an

extract from The Tiredness of Rosabel, published in 1908.

On the mark scheme, examiners were told the best answers may spot how the author described Rosabel as having “beautiful red hair and a white skin and eyes the colour of that green ribbon shot with gold”. The mark scheme said the character “has wealth, beauty and happiness, all characteristics of a privileged lifestyle” and “sound[s] pretty”.

Ms Nelson-Addy said that “intentionally or not the exam paper aligns these views about race with the students’ academic success”, and that “subtextually, to complete this assessment, students are awarded for professing the age-old ideal that white is beautiful, white is advantageous and therefore right”.

Ms Nelson-Addy was one of four members of NATE’s working group on reviewing literature who delivered lectures on Jan 27.

Sir John Hayes, a former education minister and chairman of the Common Sense Group of 60 MPs, described the session as “abject nonsense” and “bizarre wokery”.

An AQA spokesman said: “We always listen to feedback about equality, diversity and inclusion in all of our qualifications, including English. We also have an expert advisory group to consider representation in the curriculum and our assessments and resources for a wide range of subjects.”

A NATE spokesman said:“Teaching communities are asking for events like this to support their understanding – and students’ understanding – of complex and nuanced issues. The intention is not to devalue canonical texts but to contextualise and interpret them, which is the ultimate aim of all literary criticism.”

A Department for Education spokesman said: “We have published extensive guidance to help schools meet their legal duties in this area.”