ABSTRACT

Introduction: the context the major change to the secondary English curriculum since the first edition of this book has occurred at Key Stage 3 developing (some would add, with indecent haste) from the primary phase National Literacy Strategy and its centrally embedded Literacy Hour. The National Strategy: English Strand, as the National Literacy Strategy in so far as it affects English has become, now profoundly influences the entire English curriculum, as already noted, through its integration into the current National Curriculum. Perhaps ‘influences’ is too weak a word in this context, however: certainly all English departments are influenced, but in some schools and some local authorities the English curriculum as it has hitherto developed is in danger of being subsumed by the Strategy. Certainly there is something potentially all-encompassing about it, but the argument here – throughout the book and in this chapter particularly – is that it need not be so. Rather, I hope to show that, with flexible and positive interpretation, it is possible and desirable to implement the curricular changes inspired by the Strategy, and also to safeguard and develop all that is worth fighting for in the English curriculum. At the same time we need to be realistic, and directly critical when necessary, if this desirable flexibility is to be attained.