Teaching texts which are “relevant” to pupils’ lives: Ofsted’s tilt towards conservativism

Ofsted appears to have watered down what emphasis it has had on making English literature texts “relevant” to pupils’ lives, in a stance that seems to contrast directly with its position on this issue as recently as 10 years ago.

The inspectorate’s much-discussed “research review” for English, published last month, has already been criticised in one influential blog on the basis of its brisk treatment of the notion of pupils reading books which feature protagonists who are “similar to themselves”.

But further analysis of what the document says about the concept of “relevance” suggests that Ofsted has moved from a position of stating that this is one of the characteristics of good teaching to one of much more qualified endorsement, if indeed it is that.

As well as contrasting with Ofsted documents of the past, and of the findings of a major inquiry into the teaching of the subject 20 years ago by the Labour-era Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the thrust of the inspectorate’s stance appears to be at odds with a campaign on diversity in literature by the publishers Penguin and the race equality think tank Runnymede, whose research it does not reference.

In fact, the word “diversity” does not feature at all in Ofsted’s new document.

The detail