Excellent blogs. I found the claims made about what is working well very jarring when set against the quoted data around widening gaps. The Review states it has worked through a social justice lens but I'm not convinced by this at all. I think you had the right word for it: complacency.

There's also a lot of substantive knwl that could be built in from linguistic research. And pupils can do their own research.
Lang change - now there's another fascinating & useful topic. I could go on!
Hopefully the exploration of language diversity will emerge as a curricular thread in English?

Spoken language study opens up so many thrilling and pertinent debates. Pupil engagement is high.
What if KS4 pupils could do extended writing on this - Discuss the view that there's only one correct way to talk. Or this - The way we speak reveals who we are. Discuss your view on this statement.

spoken language use, power and identity. There may be some way of bringing this in but it feels like a lack of joined up thinking, esp as knwl about lang will prob be built into an Oracy framework. I'm thinking about the spoken lang work we do at KS3 which feels relevant, imp and exciting to pupils

I look forward to reading it. I've got lots more thoughts so it will be interesting to see where we overlap.

Oh good to hear that. I noticed they didn't footnote Hirsch (I think, I've only glanced through) but went for Lambert & Young re-powerful knowledge. Still problematic 😔. There are so many other ways of looking at 'knowledge' which could revitalise the study of lit.

I guess the key question now, especially with perhaps related concerns around the wellbeing of young people who are not in the workforce, is: is incremental change enough?

Finally, there is no clarity on what the threads/big ideas/unifying concepts are that will make the key stages in English cohere.

What happens about that? Who thrashes this out? It is contentious in English & without knowing what these will be, the CAR is a slightly moot point??

Tests.

Any of the proposed tests could have unintended consequences. I do have concerns around the impact of the proposed KS2 writing test if its main aim is to assess technical accuracy. Will it narrow the teaching of writing?

Same potential prob with any Y8 tests - could distort teaching.

KS4 English Lit. A missed opportunity & not addressing the elephant in the room - assessment. Disappointing to see the continued fixation on reading a whole 19th novel. Hard to see where the flexibility is to enable the study of contemporary, diverse texts. Do fewer poems?

But we can't have a new approach at KS4 which doesn't build on KS2/3.
This is one problem of looking at key stages separately. It feels bitty.

So my question/hope is that the national curriculum will identify the 'unifying ideas' of Eng Lang across stages, as developmentally appropriate.

KS4 English Lang - well, in some ways the recs are a vast improvement.

Reading & writing a range of more relevant text-types.

This could be v good if it entails teaching 'big ideas' eg audience, purpose, spoken & written lang variation according to socially-situated contexts, critical literacy.

Positives - an oracy framework, more emphasis on speaking and listening, media literacy, drama. Continuity at transition. Removal of KS2 GPS test in its current form; a shift in thinking to focus on grammar in use, and knwl around this as foundational for supporting literacy in all subjs.

Good resource for our y9 language unit tho:)

I'm also hoping to attend as many as possible.