{"id":8124,"date":"2022-06-24T05:38:40","date_gmt":"2022-06-24T05:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8124"},"modified":"2022-06-24T05:42:10","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T05:42:10","slug":"dfe-puts-ocr-on-the-naughty-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2022\/06\/24\/dfe-puts-ocr-on-the-naughty-step\/","title":{"rendered":"DfE puts OCR on the naughty step"},"content":{"rendered":"

It's quite something for a secretary of state for education to accuse an exam board of cultural vandalism, but that happened yesterday when\u00a0Nadhim Zahawi commented on OCR's decision to\u00a0update its poetry anthology by \u00a0dropping its only examples of poems by Larkin, Owen, Heaney and Hopkins, together with one poem by Keats and two by Hardy. \u00a0All dead white blokes you'll note. \u00a0The reason is to make room within its English Literature GCSE for more modern writers with diverse lived experience. \u00a0OCR is adding 15 new poems, keeping 30 and removing 15. \u00a0<\/span>There is clearly something mysterious about the number 45; maybe that the size of the bookshelf in the OCR office. \u00a0The details are here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zahawi said he'd be \"speaking to\" the exam board, although (quite rightly, I'd say) he has no power to intervene. \u00a0Given that the DfE has put OCR on the naughty step, it's a good job that the GCSE in natural history has already gotten the go-ahead.<\/p>\n

Still, the new GCSE offers an opportunity for OCR to build bridges with the DfE by mandating some poems for study in the syllabus. \u00a0Here's my first suggestion:<\/p>\n

Proud Songsters<\/h4>\n
\n
\n
The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
\nAnd the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
\nAnd as it gets dark loud nightingales
\nIn bushes
\nPipe, as they can when April wears,
\nAs if all Time were theirs.These are brand-new birds of twelve-months' growing,
\nWhich a year ago, or less than twain,
\nNo finches were, nor nightingales,
\nNor thrushes,
\nBut only particles of grain,
\nAnd earth, and air, and rain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Thomas Hardy<\/strong><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It's quite something for a secretary of state for education to accuse an exam board of cultural vandalism, but that happened yesterday when\u00a0Nadhim Zahawi commented on OCR's decision to\u00a0update its poetry anthology by \u00a0dropping its only examples of poems by...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}