English gets tougher at A-level

The number of set texts is to increase from eight to 12 in an attempt to make the course more demanding.

Students will asked be write about several works at once to encourage them to think more analytically.

The shake-up follows an admission by ministers that A-levels need to become tougher to stretch the brightest pupils.

For students joining the sixth-form next year, all exams will become harder with a return to more traditional "open-ended" questions and the addition of an A* grade to reward academic high-fliers.

Details of changes to A-level English literature emerged in a draft syllabus published by the OCR exam board.

Pupils will be required to study at least one Shakespeare play, at least one work by an author writing between 1300 and 1800 and, for the first time, a work published after 1990.

It means pupils will be studying works such as F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby alongside contemporary novels like White Teeth by Zadie Smith.

The overhaul will take the A-level in the direction of the International Baccalaureate, which is considered by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service to be academically superior and which requires students to make connections between several different works.

It is also hoped that introducing a wider range of texts will serve as better preparation for university.

Gary Snapper, of the National Association of the Teaching of English, said: "Students are going to have to do more reading and they are going to have to be taught about narrative context more thoroughly.

"The idea will be to try to push A-levels away from the focus on single set texts read in isolation from one another."

He said students will be required to look at groups of texts and the way they relate.

"Students might be comparing texts in terms of how language changes from one period to another, or how they deal with particular themes, or how they represent a particular form" he told the Times Educational Supplement.

It emerged last week how new-style A-level examination papers will cut back on highly structured questions that lead pupils towards the answer.

Instead they will face more open-ended and essay questions.

Critics have claimed questions on the "gold standard" exam have been systematically reduced to bite-sized chunks which allow students to see more clearly what is required of them.

They also claim creative answers which fail to conform to rigid marks schemes are penalised under the current system.

With sixth-formers now passing a quarter of A-levels at grade A, Education Secretary Alan Johnson accepted the need for an overhaul. Twenty-five years ago, only one in 10 exams was awarded an A.

Also from next year, the number of units will be cut from six to four. And whereas currently students only have to demonstrate understanding of the entire subject in one A-level module, in future they will have to do so in two - in effect, half the course.

SET TEXTS FOR A-LEVEL ENGLISH LITERATURE

Shakespeare, Othello

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Pardoner's Tale

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust

Zadie Smith, White Teeth

Poetry of William Wordsworth

Poetry of Christina Rossetti

Poetry of Wilfrid Owen

Poetry of Robert Frost