BA (Hons) English Secondary Education with QTS*

BA (Hons) English Secondary Education with QTS*

Interview Day

Appendix: English specialism information

2017 entry

PLEASE READ THIS BOOKLET IN PREPARATION FOR THE INTERVIEW AND BRING IT WITH YOU ON THE DAY

* The recommendation for the award of qualified teacher status

Part One

Although any interview situation is a relatively formal process we would like to make your interview for the Secondary Undergraduate English course as comfortable as possible so that you feel able to ask questions relating to the course at any stage. Above all, both you and the interview staff need to gain as much information as possible in order to be able to decide whether the undergraduate secondary programme and ultimately a career in English teaching are right for you.

The interview will be in five stages. The English Course Leader or other colleague leading the interview will explain what you need to do for each stage. The stages are:

1Outline of the English Course - This will take the form of a presentation incorporating a question and answer session that will provide you with an overview of the whole course.

2.Reading task – you will be provided with a newspaper or journal article (see below). The activity will complement the written task.

3.Written exercise - The recent national review of teaching standards has placed a requirement on teacher training establishments to incorporate a written activity as part of the interview procedures. This will be used to look at this important aspect of your communication skills. It will also enable you to demonstrate an initial understanding of issues relating to English and to English Education.

4.Individual interview - Individual interviews of about 20 minutes will be conducted. You will be asked questions on the following topics:

• subject knowledge in relation to National Curriculum English
• effective English teaching (including class management)
• the wider role of the teacher
• current issues in education

5.Teaching Presentation – As part of your individual interview, you will asked to give a short teaching presentation (max 5min) to teach the use of the possessive apostrophe to a Yr 7 group. You should prepare your presentation and any resources you would like to use. A white board with projector and a non- interactive whiteboard and pen will be available to you.

The reading/written tasks and individual interviews will allow opportunities for you to demonstrate your command of spoken and written Standard English.

In preparation for the interview, you are advised to read the Department for Education website ( and to acquaint yourself with recent developments and current issues in education

You should also consider your response to the article enclosed with your invitation to interview. It is also important that you know what actually goes on in secondary English classrooms. If you have had no classroom observation or similar experience, we strongly advise you to spend a day or more in a secondary school before you come for interview.

Part Two

Please read the following in preparation for the Secondary English interview, and bring it with you on the day. You may annotate it if you wish.

Philip Pullman: children need the freedom to take risks

The Telegraph

25 Mar 2015

Although Philip Pullman has been out of the classroom for over 20 years, his views on education remain strong; a fact he openly recognises on his website, where he writes that his passion for the subject has occasionally led him to make "foolish and ill-considered remarks" about the state of schooling in the country.

Ill-considered or not, it is his belief that relentless testing and a focus on league table rankings has led to a lack freedom for pupils to take risks and engage with their subject. A concern he is not alone in voicing.

Among others, Tony Little, outgoing head at Eton, argued a similar point in October, warning that Britain was “peculiarly uninventive” in its schooling. Speaking at Cheltenham Literary Festival, Little criticised "ritualised, mechanical” exams and said that while young people have a "tremendous energy and power" the nation fails to harness it, compromising creativity in a drive to achieve excellence.

It's a belief that seems to chime with Pullman, bestselling author of His Dark Materials series and Grimm Tales for Old and Young, a modern retelling of the famous fairy tales.

Having recently judged the second Connell Guides essay prize, Pullman was full of praise for the winner, Eleanor Winn, whose analysis of Jez Butterworth’s play 'Jerusalem' Pullman described as "enthusiastic and clear".

High praise indeed. Yet it was the structure and argument presented by Eleanor, unconstrained by curriculum and exam requirements, which demonstrated the importance of giving students the ability to freely explore their topic.

"One reads that teachers are much more circumscribed in what they can get children to do," says Pullman. "The children have to complete certain tasks in a particular way or they won’t get a particular mark, which goes toward a school’s place in the league tables."

Looking back to his own schooling – in the "Middle Ages", he laughs – he speaks with enthusiasm about having the time to experiment, the time to read outside the curriculum and the time to take part in drama.

"I don’t think that happens now," he laments. "There is so much pressure on kids to pass exams, and teachers have to cram every second of the day with curricular material. That is an awful imprisonment, a deprivation it seems to me.

"Concentrating on exams puts the burden of responsibility in the wrong place. It puts a burden of responsibility on the children. ‘You’ve got to pass this, or the school will go down in the league tables’. Well no. Children have to be educated and that means cultivating a wider understanding of things, a wider experience of things, without having to pass the test."

He adds: "It’s a pity that the system is such that teachers can’t say to their students, ‘why don’t you try this, it might not work, but it won’t matter because you will have learnt something.’"

Failure is one of the key issues. The exam system, Pullman argues, creates a culture within schools where success means passing tests. Approaching a topic from a different angle or studying texts outside the specified curricula material can be discouraged, meaning pupils often don't get the opportunity to take risks without the worry of failure; a worry that can apply equally to teachers.

"There’s got to be freedom for teachers ... to try something different from the normal timetable," he says. "There’s got to be space and time in the curriculum, they mustn’t be hurried and harried and pressed and bullied and nagged and worried into doing things that they know are pointless or counterproductive.

As a former teacher, despite leaving the profession in the mid 90s, Pullman is an occasional voice in education, recently commenting in a Radio 4 interview on the demise of the "grand, stately" language of the King James Bible; leaving children with "flat and dull" texts.

He's a great advocate of the inspiring force of first hand experience; whether that's seeing a painting or play in person or witnessing an orchestra. But he also points out that luck plays a part in the ability to take part in such events – a point he brings back to Winn's success with her essay.

"Eleanor was lucky enough to have been taken to this play," he says, " but there are plenty of children who aren’t lucky enough to live near to a theatre, with parents who aren't wealthy enough to go ... But every child should have the experience of being introduced to great writing by great writers, to great painting by great painters and having their ears opened to great music.

"There are three parts to success," he continues, "the first is talent, the second is hard work and the third one is luck. No two of those are any good without the third, you’ve got to have all three.

"There’s a marvellous organisation called the Shakespeare Schools Festival (SSF)," he adds. "If a school is lucky enough to have a head teacher who is broad minded and adventurous enough to say ‘yes, let’s do this’, then marvellous things can happen. I’m very proud to be associated with this organisation [as a patron], they are doing wonders.

"What we have to do, it seems to me, with children of all ages, is to have lots of exciting things lying around. Not to push them on, but to give them the time and opportunity to pick them up and play with them.

"You don’t know what the outcome will be; it may be that a great poet is the outcome, it might be a person with a more broad mind than they otherwise might have had. It’s our duty as adults, it’s our duty as a nation to make sure that children – the next generation – have this opportunity."

Foolish or ill-considered? That's your decision. But for Pullman, it's clear that change needs to happen.

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