Writing Now and Then – The Coursework Folder and What Has Been Lost

We’re living in a post-coursework era in secondary English. Some might clap their hands in delight, others groan.

With the exception of the NEA, a single extended piece of writing for A Level, there are no opportunities in GCSE or A Level for state school students to be examined and rewarded for anything other than timed exam answers – all of which conform to specific patterns of questioning, narrowing the nature of reader response and writing not only in the exams themselves but in the curriculum all the way back into KS3.  

There are all kinds of arguments raised against coursework – some of them perfectly understandable concerns and caveats, around such issues as plagiarism, the gaming of the system, students endlessly re-working writing, the reliability of teacher assessment, social justice, workload and more.  Personally, I think many of these are not inevitable or insurmountable and are largely the product of a massively over-zealous – and ineffective – accountability culture, rather than located irrevocably in coursework itself, but this is not what I’m going to be arguing about in this blog. What I want to do here is purely to focus on what I see as the losses to the education of students arising from the absence of coursework. And I want to do this by looking at the writing that was done in the past, in a period when coursework for A Level English Literature was, at least in some quarters, flourishing. I want to add knowledge of this past flowering to the present conversations, so that, at the very least, anyone debating it has a really good sense of what they’re saying no to. The arguments against might outweigh the benefits, but let’s at least be fully aware of the benefits. As with everything in education, nothing is perfect – everything has its pros and cons. 

So what is it that we’re now missing, as a result of the swing away from coursework?

Every now and then, I look back at the examples of writing I have kept over time, in a personal archive. This time, I was prompted by a course I was running at EMC last half term, where we were looking at current A Level writing.  I found a batch of coursework essays from 1989, when I was teaching at City and Islington College. They were on a single text, Wide Sargasso Sea. The students were doing AEB (Associated Examining Board) 660, a course that was 50% coursework, 50% final exam. This particular batch of work was not that of my own students but rather of colleagues of mine. (It’s worth stating by way of context that City and Islington is an inner-London college and in that period, in the 1980s and 1990s, its intake was representative of the area it largely served – that is, diverse, with students of very different attainment levels, coming from a wide range of schools and backgrounds and with different experiences of studying English.)

Looking at this writing now, some things leap out at me. 

Range of Writing

First is the range. Below is a list of the essays in the batch. 

1. Writing an episode, 'The Fire at Coulibri', in the voice of a character (Mr Mason) STUDENT A
2. Writing an episode, 'The Fire at Coulibri' in the voices of three characters (Tia, Daniel Cosway and Sandi) STUDENT B
3. Writing an episode, 'The Fire at Coulibri' in the voice of a character (Annette) STUDENT C
4. A book cover and blurb – a commentary and analysis of a designed cover and blurb, alongside published ones for Wide Sargasso Sea STUDENT D
5. A collage on Wide Sargasso Sea, with a commentary on the choices made STUDENT D
6. An essay: ‘Is Antoinette mad? What do different people in the novel have to say about it? Are any of the voices more reliable than others? Why? STUDENT E
7. An essay: In Wide Sargasso Sea there are many references to sleep and dreams. Rhys explicitly links the three dreams on Pages 23, 50 and 153-5. Discuss the use of the references in relation to imagery used and in relation to the plot. STUDENT F
8. A close analysis of an episode: Provide a detailed analysis of the third dream, as the culmination both of the dream sequence and the novel. Show how it relates to the other references to dreams and sleep in the rest of the novel. How appropriate does it seem as the end of the novel? STUDENT G
9. An Essay: A psychoanalytical reading of Wide Sargasso Sea. STUDENT H
10. An Essay: A critical reading of Wide Sargasso Sea seen from a Marxist perspective. STUDENT A
11. An Essay: A feminist reading of Wide Sargasso Sea. STUDENT B
12. An Essay: Examine the relationship between Antoinette and her husband and Rhys’ treatment of it. STUDENT I

As you can see, the students are doing quite a number of different tasks. The tasks also span conventional literary critical essays and more creative tasks such as writing in the voice of one or more characters, or creating collages or book covers and commentaries. Some are close focus, others range across the whole text. 

Even within tasks, there are variations – so one student writes in three different voices while others focus on just one, and the dream essays are different. One is a broader look at the dreams and the role they play in the novel, the other more of a detailed, close reading of a single dream episode. There are sustained essays taking on the role of a theorist – Marxist, feminist or psychoanalytical. The students have written in different modes. We can see the work of students A and B crossing different genres of ‘academic’ writing about the text. 

Each of these students would almost certainly have produced more written pieces on this text than the ones here. Writing more than would ultimately be assessed in the folder, and this kind of range of writing, was common practice at the time. With advice from their teacher, they would choose their very best work for their final coursework submission and that might include creative-critical as well as more conventional essays.

Stepping away from the Wide Sargasso Sea essays, I can confirm all of this with another, different collection of my own students’ coursework folders from the 1980s to early 1990s. Below is a list of the essays in two folders, showing all the essays and other responses that two students from that same period actually submitted. None of the coursework texts were mandated by the Awarding Body, though there were some parameters set. The texts chosen had to cover all literary genres, including non-fiction, and an extended essay that compared two texts by period, theme or author. Teachers chose the texts for study, with many overlaps in a single institution allowing for shared resources and discussion in the team, but also some individual choices by a teacher keen to teach a particular text. The students often studied more texts than required and students often chose to submit on slightly different texts.

Student 1

1. Reflect back on the events of Heat and Dust in the voice of one of the characters.
2. Compare and contrast the two essays, 'On Leaving School' by Nadine Gordimer and Derek Walcott.
3. What views on imperialism does George Orwell put across in ‘Marrakech’ and ‘Shooting an Elephant’?
4. Write Chapter 29 for Jane Eyre, alongside a commentary on what you have written.
5. Write about the presentation of Mr Rochester as the hero of Jane Eyre.
6. Select six poems for inclusion in an anthology of twentieth century poetry and write an introduction for it.
7. What is the view of love which A Midsummer Night’s Dream presents? How does Shakespeare explore this theme?
8. 'On Leaving School' – Text Free Creative Writing
9. Extended Essay: ‘In Animal Farm and 1984 how does George Orwell fulfil his stated aim to ‘fuse political and artistic purpose?’

Student 2

1. An analysis of Chapter 4 of Washington Square.
2. The American Dream – What does Death of a Salesman have to say about this?
3. Write about Emily Dickinson’s unusual treatment of death.
4. The events of Heat and Dust as seen through the eyes of Beth Crawford
5. Comment on Act 2 Scene 4 of Twelfth Night and its importance in the play.
6. Write about the treatment of love in Twelfth Night.
7. What do Flannery O’Connor’s essays reveal about her views on the art of fiction? What is the style of the essays and how would you evaluate them as essays?  
8. Extended Essay: The presentation of the female experience in Dorothy Parker’s short stories, poems and articles. 

John Hodgson, in his excellent article ‘The Work of the Course: Validity and Reliability in Assessing English Literature' quotes another example of a coursework submission from the early 1990s from a different school and teacher. This confirms how wide-ranging and diverse coursework could be, within the basic parameters of fulfilling genre requirements.

1. Pastiche of Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust.

2. What impressions have some of Sylvia Plath's poems made on you?

3. Retell the events of The Caretaker as if you were one of the characters.

4. Comment on the style and technique of Graham Swift in one chapter of Waterland.

5. Lear refers to his "two pernicious daughters" (III.ii.22). How far is he justified in hisstatement?

6. Miller's skill as a playwright as shown in Death of a Salesman.

7. An Appreciation of Paradise Lost IV 205-222.

8. Non-Fiction: 'An Environmental Proposal by Nirex', based on Swift's ‘A Modest Proposal’.

9. Extended Essay: 'My Struggle (non-fiction): Under the Eye of the Clock' by Christopher Nolan, with reference to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou).

(Hodgson’s article is well worth reading for a more detailed overview of AEB 660 and a more thorough look at the methods of assessment, moderation and their reliability, as well as the benefits for teacher development and CPD.)

Creative/Critical Responses

Creative responses to literary texts are sometimes derided by those who position themselves as being ‘anti-progressive’. They ridicule them as being absurd dumbing down and don’t want to acknowledge what’s been lost in these kinds of responses being almost entirely wiped out of the formal examining system. One Awarding Body (OCR) still offers a very limited opportunity for this as an optional small part of the NEA (close reading or re-creative writing) but otherwise it is only offered by teachers who choose to do it as an additional extra during the course.

So, is it dumbing down? Is it low level, time-wasting, tricksy nonsense? Or does it have something to offer. I want to show you some extracts from these kinds of tasks in the Wide Sargasso Sea batch of essays and let you judge for yourself. Here are a few paragraphs from Student B’s writing in the voice of three different characters in the novel (each around 2 sides of A4):

TIA

We make friends quick, we both bored, I tired of listening to my mother and Christophine’s talk, always the same talk about Emancipation or whatever. I learn some about Antoinette’s family, just listening, she tell me the reast. Her mother ‘sad’, ‘lonely’, don’t care for her the way my mother care for me. They don’t have much money either – more than us maybe – but not much just the same. She have a sick brother – I hear people say he an idiot, but I never saw him so to me he just sick. Antoinette sometimes get angry that her mother care so much about him and not for her, but not real anger, it was just, I don’t know, but not anger.

DANIEL COSWAY

I have not lived a happy life, this I must make clear from the start. When my momma died there was no way I could stop it. It is not my place to make judgement, but anyone can see it was poverty that kill her. Old Cosway never gave her her dues for bearing his child, just like so many other slave women. He was a cruel and greedy man. All my life I want to say my piece. I know it’s not my father who will listen to me after that last time I see him, but I think one day I will makes somebody sit and hear my story, as he did that day. And it is a story worth hearing, oh yes, I make sure of that much.

SANDI

We were together often when we were younger. She was always willing to go places and do things, happy to be away from home and her mother. She wasn’t wild though, not bad – she would never hurt anything, even snakes when we saw them. we were happy with each other.

I didn’t see her for a long time when her mother married Mr Mason. She told me later what he thought of blacks, how he forbid her to see me, tried to make her ashamed of me. I just laughed. At the time, though, I was hurt, I was young, and I didn’t understand. When I saw her going to the convent, being followed and teased, I wanted to protext her. I wanted to take her and say this didn’t have to happen. She could come with me and stay with me. I let her go. From the convent she went straight into that marriage. Maybe I should have told her she didn’t have to do it. She could have come with me.

As you can see, the student has internalised a huge amount about this novel – not just its themes and characterisation but also the style of writing and varying use of Creole in the voices of the characters. She has captured the interior monologue style of the original beautifully. 

The inclusion of a commentary was of critical importance in this kind of task. To give a flavour of this, here is a short extract from the commentary on the extra chapter of ‘Jane Eyre’, written by one of my own students:

The character of Jane in a way reverts back to her childhood behaviour, as the outside world has treated her badly and she becomes more insular, using her imagination as a form of escapism, as she does in Gateshead.

The symbols I have used in my version are the bed covers, which represent the imaginary wall that separates Jane from the rest of the world ‘the covers were my barrier against…the outside world.’ And as with Brontë in Chapter Five, when Jane leaves Gateshead for Lowood, I use the door to symbolise the leaving of an old life and new beginnings, ‘I stretch my hand to turn the handle…to enter my new life beyond.’

Book covers and blurbs, or collages, have probably got an even worse press than writing in the voice of characters or other kinds of recreative writing. Is this justified? Perhaps if that’s all that students were doing that would be the case, and perhaps if the bar were set low for reflection and justification. But in the context of a varied range of tasks, and high expectations of comment and analysis, I would argue that they can be perfectly acceptable. In the book blurbs essay, towards the end, Student D says:

I have produced a blurb which gives a representation of the racial aspect of the novel in its story. Putting forward the fact that Antoinette as a Creole girl is of a race which is unique. But because of circumstance, the Emancipation Act having had its effect, and poverty, she becomes rejecting by both the black and white Jamaican community. And then, because of her upbringing and sensitivity, is deeply affected by the constant jeering she is submitted to, and the actions against her that she has to bear. For example Tia ending their friendship so suddenly. That is why I chose to use a quote that aptly showed the racism she was subjected to. 

In the same student’s commentary on her collage, she says

To produce what I want I first looked for key points in the text. The first impressions of the setting, the Jamaican landscape, which stuck in my mind were the colours, especially when looking at them through Antoinette’s husband’s eyes:

            ‘Everything is too much…too much blue, too much purple, too much green…The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near.’

This idea of everything being too much is very intriguing. It also gave me the impression of some sort of dreamworld. They could be from a nasty dream, of unnerving and unfamiliar things. As this description is very forceful, with its use of monosyllable words, it has a certain amount of aggression in it. It seems to be aimed at what is being described. The beauty is overpowering the husband. The difference to England is so great that it unbalances the man.

She goes on to discuss the importance of madness ‘and the suspicion of it’ that is key to the book. She says

 It is another of the elements that pushes the inevitable fate on. It encircles the picture (her collage) showing how there is no escape from the accusation of madness, whether it is true or not. And that she has no way of denying it.

Finally, she says

This novel is a tragedy. It is, from the start, an ever-decreasing circle. There is no way out. Therefore my collage is a picture of the crumbling Granbois, engulfed in the magnificent Carribean landscape. This includes the colours, the flora and the mountains as described in the text but all are scantily put together. Sometimes ill fitting. Then to signify the trap of the tragedy, the whole village is encased in the box. This and the three quotes represent the inescapable words and false beauty which leads the story to its enevitable end.

I have chosen to include this student’s spelling mistakes and technical errors. She is clearly not an especially competent writer, nor a very high-attaining student, but I think she conveys strongly her understanding of the deeper issues in the text and writes very well about significant aspects of style and setting, explaining the choices she made in her collage in literary terms. This kind of task has served her very well, in my view.

How Do the Students Write?

Finally, let’s take a brief look at the tasks that are most conventional – the essays based on a title, where students were expected to analyse, discuss, explore a theme or an aspect of character or the narrative. Again, I’d stress that these students were not all exceptionally high attaining. They represent a spectrum. Yet both in these Wide Sargasso Sea essays, and in the final folders of my own students, there are some marked differences between this writing and some patterns in the writing one sometimes sees these days. This is not always the case, of course – I see some brilliant writing in our competitions, writing for emagazine and essays shared by teachers, but there is a worrying broader pattern emerging from an AO-led culture, pressure for results and a more formulaic approach to writing about texts.   What marks out this earlier writing for me from the more formulaic and exam-driven writing is that it has an exploratory and personal flavour. It is writing as thinking  By that I mean that the students write to genuinely express their own thoughts, to make points, tease out ideas, clarify and explain their views, not to prove that they’ve ‘got in’ certain phrases, or ‘hit’ AOs or used literary terms, or ‘sound academic’. They are academic but not showily so. They do not seem to have an examiner constantly in their sights. And they write with clarity. Interestingly, there were hardly any instances in the writing I looked at where I might have wanted to raise serious doubts about the validity of the ideas themselves. There is a personal ownership of the material and an authentic, personal voice too. Each essay is different. They are not uniform and set phrases are absent.

Here are just two examples to show what I mean.

Essay Extract 1 – STUDENT F

Sleep and dreams contribute a lot to the overall effect of this novel. For me they add an important and interesting insight into the character of Antoinette. As an ending of the novel, the last dream was confusing. Basically because I was expecting some sort of link to ‘Jane Eyre’, but if you ignore this the ending is very effective.

I thought it was an unusual conclusion because the dream told the ending, as I chose to read it. All it said was the dream reminded Antoinette what she must do, so because I had read 'Jane Eyre' and knew Rochester’s mad wife set fire to the house it was difficult for me to see it any other way. 

The dream in the beginning is surprisingly straightforward and coherent, as if everything happens with ease and in slow motion.

 ‘I got up took the keys and let myself out with a candle in my hand. It was easier this time than ever before and I walked as though I were flying’.

In the second paragraph I got the impression of emptiness, a deserted house, Antoinette like a ghost prowling the corridors, and indeed Antoinette is the ghost that people say haunts the house although she doesn’t realise it. Perhaps because she doesn’t really believe she is in this house, and wants to believe there is something else in the house that is not quite right. Having a ghost doesn’t make her seem so bad….

….These dreams not only make the story much more interesting, but also add another aspect to the narrative. It is told through her eyes, his eyes, and dreams. They are cleverly used, in the way they get the reader to look at symbols, not say images that are easily comprehensible. They also fitted into the innocent, trance-like character of Antoinette. Her whole life appeared like a dream and she was like a spectral figure. Beautiful and distanced.

Essay Extract 2 – STUDENT B

'Wide Sargasso Sea' ends with the child, Antoinette, having grown into a woman, being imprisoned in an attic room by her husband. If only for this reason I think that Rhys is making a feminist statement – Antoinette being the heroine of the novel rather than the villain. It seems that Rhys was trying to convey through the story the overwhelming helplessness of both Antoinette and her mother. From the very beginning it is clear neither of them have had the opportunity to make any decision concerning thier (sic) lives, except perhaps Anette’s decision to marry Mr. Cosway. Antoinette is truly helpless. They are both dependant on men, the men are aware of this and, in Rhys’ view, exploit their power to their full potential. Rhys does of course concern herself with other issues, such as the conflict between blacks and whites, but to my mind it is the problems experienced by women which are her main concern.

[…]

The conflict between men and women is paralleled by the conflict between the English and the islanders: England being a place of male power and the islands ‘belonging’ to women like Christophine. The parrot symbolises the way in which ideas and values were imposed by the intruding men onto the women. The parrot dies, a sign of great disaster, because it has had its wings clipped by Mr Mason, so it cannot fly away from the fire. In the same way Antoinette’s (and Anette’s (sic)) ‘wings were clipped’ by the dependence imposed on them.’

Conclusion

We may well be in a post-coursework era –  those days may well and truly be over. And, of course, the complexities of AI text generation will undoubtedly have a huge influence in the future of how student work and writing is assessed. But I hope that this blog has demonstrated some of what has been lost. Perhaps the answer is to get assessment back into a more proportionate relationship to learning? If the kinds of writing experiences shown above were still possible in the work of the course then it might not matter quite so much if the assessment were just focused on a narrower evidencing of that. Or perhaps we might enter a new phase of trust, where accountability no longer distorts the judgements of teachers and where professional decisions and ‘continuous’ assessment might at least play a part. Whatever the answer, we need to recognise that the subject has become diminished if it no longer makes space for this range of writing, this kind of writing and the whole idea of writing as a means of thinking, that we saw in those earlier times.