Work got underway, starting with a new twice-yearly recommendation lists for teachers highlighting further reading they may wish to recommend to students for their coursework or bring into classroom discussions. These lists aim to “highlight contemporary and forgotten classics with a particular eye on authorial diversity in terms of ethnicity, gender, disability and sexuality”, and was launched in July 2020 when the murder of George Floyd and the global Black Lives Matter protests encouraged more teachers and students to ask OCR if there was space to make changes.
“We had a really thoughtful and comprehensive letter from a Year 12 student that really emphasised the need for a long-term commitment to making changes now, as well as at the next point of reform,” says Woodger.
The process of choosing new texts for an exam board can be complex, and Woodger and Nolan set up an external panel of experts to review their exam specifications and text choices. “We wanted the panel to represent teachers currently working within schools, those working to diversify school curricula, those specialising in Black British and World Literature, as well as those who worked in Initial Teacher Training,” Woodger explains.
Texts were selected on a number of considerations, primarily literary value as well as how well they worked for an exam setting. They also had to fit the requirements stated by Ofqual and the Department of Education, such as GCSE students studying fiction or drama from 1914 onwards. “Any new text needs to be accessible but also able to stretch and challenge,” Woodger says. “Our chosen play, Winsome Pinnock’s Leave Taking, does this really well. The action switches between two living room settings and follows a linear structure, while the exploration of generational and cultural clashes, and the search for identity and belonging are relevant and engaging.
“For us it really wasn’t a matter of steering away from anything and rather looking toward ensuring that authors of colour, particularly women, were better reflected in these new selections than they have been in the past.”