GCSE English Literature Exams

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, but it is a surprise to be called quite so early. As the debate is about GCSE English literature and I am a Member of Parliament from Scotland, I do not plan to speak at great length, but I will give some thoughts. I thank the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for her eloquent and detailed introduction. She covered the vast majority of the issues to be considered, of which there are many, such as rote learning, mental health, the difficulty of examining and the examination system.

I will begin with the mental health issues and the pressures on young people. There is no doubt that young people who undergo state exams suffer from mental health difficulties. Many schools have mental health support systems in place, where young people can go to take time out and discuss their issues. During the many years in which I was a teacher in Scotland, the curriculum underwent a transformation. We went from a situation where everything depended on the final exam to having an element of continual assessment, and finally to both playing a part with a chunk of continual assessment that counted towards the final exam.

[John Howell]

I want to pursue the mental health issue, because I am a bit confused by the debate so far. We accept that students have mental health issues, which include a lot of mental health stress, but that is not entirely related to examinations. Is the hon. Lady aware of any work that has subdivided out mental health stress and tried to assess where it comes from? Otherwise, it is impossible to say, “This bit relates to exams and this bit does not.”

[Carol Monaghan]

Of course, unless the stress is examined in great detail, it is difficult to see where it is. When we examine the number of instances of mental health problems that young people experience at different stages of their school career, we see that young people in early secondary school have fewer issues than those who are at the point of taking national exams. There are definite links between the examination regime and young people’s mental health. There are a vast number of other contributing factors, including poverty, family background and social standing—many different things—but there is increased incidence of poor mental health among young people sitting state exams.

What I saw—this is anecdotal, and comes without a background of evidence—was that when young people had an element of continual assessment and a final exam, they understood the parameters under which they were operating. We saw more difficulties when there were constant submissions, deadlines to be met throughout the year and different deadlines in different subjects that meant that young people faced continual pressure that culminated in a final exam. Continual assessment can increase mental health difficulties.

The hon. Member for Warrington North questioned whether it was necessary for young people to retain a huge amount of information in their head when they can readily google it and click on the relevant page. In Scotland, in 2004 or 2005, it was decided to provide young people with a relationship sheet, which was basically a bunch of formulae, because it was realised that many had difficulty memorising them. In physics, we are not trying to examine young people’s memory but how they apply formulae, whether they can problem solve and whether they can think outside the box. It was considered that the sheet would be helpful, although there was a huge amount of scepticism among physics teachers, who thought that it was dumbing down.

In fact, giving young people the formula sheet allowed them to be more creative and to think about different examples. It also allowed us to introduce open-ended questions in exams, which were not just about young people showing that they had remembered a formula, sticking the numbers in and getting an answer. It allowed us to examine them more deeply on their physics knowledge, and the exam was improved greatly as a result. We saw great increases in critical thinking—their ability to evaluate and to discuss different experimental set-ups. It was a huge success.

Data sheets or formula sheets are still used in physics exams in Scotland. They are always given out at the start of the exam in the form of a booklet. Importantly, they come from the exam board—the Scottish Qualifications Authority—which administers them at the start of every exam diet. When they are given out with the exam paper, they are pristine and untouched—there is no way to tamper with them. After that, they can be taken away and used in departments. New ones must be used every year to ensure that they cannot be interfered with.

To relate that to English, I have a great deal of sympathy for the petition and I understand the points behind it, but I worry about the volume of information that would have to be taken into the exam. There are 15 poems and a number of texts, so how many pieces of information would young people take in?

We have heard that the exact words matter when we are talking about English literature—and they do. Simply shoehorning in a quote to try to make a point does not always work if there is not a degree of understanding behind that quote. There has to be a deep understanding of the text, but that can be shown without quoting directly, or with possible differences or slight mistakes in the quote. Having said that, Burns, who is part of the Scottish curriculum, famously said:

“We’re bought and sold for English gold—

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!”

Would that have meant the same if he had said, or if a pupil quoted in an exam, “a bunch of sell-outs”? I am not sure that it would.

On the issue of practicality, how can we set an open-book exam where young people do not have to memorise all those texts and where the invigilator knows that the information is clean and untampered with? How big a desk and how big a space would be required? All those things are important. If we did as in the physics exam in Scotland and had a short booklet with lists of quotes, that would stifle creativity far more, because we would be telling the young people which quotes were important. I question whether that is what is required, or indeed desired.

In addition, open-book exams take longer. If young people are given a dictionary in a modern language exam, it takes them longer to look through it than to just get on with it. How much additional stress will we cause young people by extending exams to hours and hours, rather than there being a finite time in which they have to produce quotes? There is some merit in having quotes to which young people are able to refer, but I question whether having an open-book exam for something such as English literature practically can become a reality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

Pupils may wish to cite a quote in their response to a question, but not every question in an English literature exam is about the choice of language. Other concepts and principles may be being tested. An understanding of the themes behind a piece of literature may well also be the purpose of the question. Where the question is about the use of language, students will score higher marks if they can cite the precise language or word being used. That does not mean that they are required by the syllabus to memorise vast tracts of text as part of the course and the preparation for the GCSE English literature exam.

[Carol Monaghan]

I am torn in this debate. Is the requirement not to quote large chunks of text properly communicated to those marking the exam scripts?

[Nick Gibb]

Those things are made very clear by the exam boards and Ofqual. If there is an issue of communication, that is between the exam boards and the schools and the schools and the pupils, and that is something we will take up. In responding to concerns that Members from across the country have raised in correspondence about constituents, that point has been made extensively.

What the introduction of closed-book examinations means in practice is that in the examination pupils are not provided with full copies of the novels, plays or poems that they have studied during the course. The expectation is that pupils will have read and studied those books and texts at school, and that will best prepare them to answer the questions in the exam. Having read widely means they will be able to answer questions on unseen texts as well as the ones they have studied.

It is important that pupils are not misled into believing that they will get good marks simply by memorising and writing out the poems or texts that they have studied. Pupils will not be marked on their ability to learn and remember the exact words of poems or texts by heart. They may gain extra marks through the intelligent use of textual references and quotations, perhaps using approximate language on occasions. Pupils are assessed on their interpretations of the text, which they may choose to do with reference to short quotations or important passages.

Each individual exam board will have guidance for their examiners, which is a better answer for the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), for each specification that covers expectations of the marking scheme, including how examiners should approach textual references and quotes.

Although having access to full texts is not permitted, Ofqual does not prohibit access to all texts during an exam. Exam boards may give pupils extracts from, for example, a novel, a scene from a play or a poem that they have studied as part of the exam materials, which pupils can use to support the argument they are making in their answer to the exam question. To ensure that pupils are familiar with what is expected of them and the types of additional material that the exam boards may provide, exemplar materials are provided to schools.

To earn good marks, pupils need to be able to show that they are familiar with the texts that they have studied and, in some questions, that their understanding is sufficiently developed to be able to compare them either with one another or with unseen texts that have been given to them in the exam. Pupils will need to write about a poem that they have studied which is not given to them in the exam, but that does not require them to reproduce the text in full. It requires pupils to recollect aspects of the poem, such as themes, issues or the way in which language is used to create particular effects—not necessarily using exact quotes—so as to compare it with the one provided in the exam. Thanks to a literature-rich diet throughout their schooling and a careful study of the core GCSE texts, pupils should be well prepared to write confidently about poems and other relevant material without recourse to long quotations.

In the past, pupils have been able to take either annotated or clean copies of the studied texts into the exam. However, that risks undermining the requirement for them to have studied in detail the whole text as part of their course. That requirement is important and is particularly relevant in poetry, since if pupils know they will be given access to the whole text of a poem as part of their exam, they may feel that they do not need to study the whole poem as they can just read it during the exam. That would, of course, take up valuable time during the exam and mean that they would not necessarily have covered the whole curriculum.

Additionally, if pupils have the text available to them, it will shape the expectations of the exam. For example, if pupils could refer to the text, exam questions and their mark schemes would expect a much more detailed and extensive use of highly relevant quotes and references. Pupils could spend a large proportion of their examined time merely copying out quotations, rather than showing that they had understood the subject matter. As it is, questions and mark schemes for the new qualifications are written in the knowledge that pupils will not have access to the text, and expectations are moderated accordingly. The same position relates to questions where extracts are provided. For example, if an extract from a novel or a play by Shakespeare is provided, clear and detailed references and quotes may be expected and papers are marked accordingly.

The petition notes that in addition to quotes pupils are expected to remember

“how to analyse them, plus remembering the whole plot, themes, characters and quotes from another book.”

Although that is true, it is not clear that providing a copy of the text will be of any advantage to a pupil. If the pupil is not aware of or able to recall the plot, themes and characters in the texts that they have studied, having a copy of the text with no notes or annotations will not help them.

Indeed, Ofqual has pointed out that pupils might in fact be disadvantaged if they were provided with the text. A comparatively short exam does not give time for pupils who are unfamiliar with or who have forgotten the themes or structure of the text to use the text in the exam to demonstrate the understanding expected. Additionally, even if pupils have a good understanding of the text prior to the assessment, there is a risk that they might spend significant portions of the exam searching for quotes or references in the mistaken belief that that will secure them high marks. Again, unless the text is provided, the mark schemes for the reformed qualifications do not expect extensive textual references or quotes from memory.

Finally, the practice of pupils taking copies of texts into the exam creates practical problems for exam boards and centres. The majority of text editions come with an introduction, notes and glossary. Those annotated texts are very helpful in the classroom and are the most obvious choice when schools are deciding which books to buy. However, such texts would not be appropriate in the exam room, and schools would need to purchase an extra set of texts free of textual additions. Not only might it be difficult to source text-only editions, but it would be a major expense and would ensure that schools did not vary the choices of text that they wanted their students to study.

I hope that hon. Members are reassured that to pass the new English literature GCSE pupils are not required to memorise vast amounts of texts, and therefore pupils will not be disadvantaged by a closed-book exam. The new English literature GCSE introduces pupils to some of the key works of English literature. It is an excellent preparation for A-level and helps to introduce pupils to our society’s shared cultural literacy.