Responding to reform:how aware are higher education English providers of A level reforms and how have they responded to them?

Abstract

This paper reports on the findings from a survey of academics responsible for undergraduate programmes in English and examines the extent to which they were aware of recent reform of A level English and had made, or are making, changes to their courses as a result. Our findings demonstrate that relatively low numbers felt that they had a strong awareness of changes to post 16 curricula and most of the respondents indicated that they had not made and were not making any changes in direct response to the changes at A level to better support transition. The findings raise a number of questions regarding universities’ involvement in and knowledge of A level reform, the various ways that schools, colleges and universities can work together to develop effective transition for students, and how government, exam regulators and awarding bodies might best develop effective channels of communication to enable cross-phase dialogue.