This paper considers recent developments in English education policy as, confirming promises made in the 2016 White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere, schools are now to concentrate on the realisation of a knowledge-based curriculum, one that allows all students to ‘acquire’ cultural capital. First, the remodelling of Bourdieu’s concept, designed to explain class privilege, means that the cultural capital is now a mechanism for disciplining schools and teachers who fail to deliver the required curriculum. Second, in going beyond the social inclusion advocated by previous governments, this version of cultural capital has simply recycled the 1950s notion of cultural deprivation, turning it into a ‘knowledge deficit’ to be explained with reference to the work of ED Hirsch. It remains to be seen if ‘Hirsch-knowledge’ offers anything more than passive consumption of approved content, and the paper ends with a discussion of the implications for students of the new curriculum.
In this paper I investigate students' experience of the assessment regime in A-Level English literature, and present data from a small-scale interview study with students intending to study English at university. Research has shown that students experience conflict between reading for pleasure and reading for assessment; and I draw upon Bernstein's work on invisible and visible pedagogies to explain how the personal response hinders interpretation of text they do not find pleasurable. Interview data explore some strategies that students might adopt, perhaps helping us to understand how they become, or fail to be, successful.
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