Coming soon to a school near you: CREATIVE WRITING A LEVEL
At last creative writing is recognised as a serious subject, not as a bit of time wasting frippery…
The ability to use language as an effective tool is an important life skill with a vital role to play in the work place and in personal life. It’s not only about making up stories (although hey! that too…), it is also about being able to project, persuade, placate, construct an argument, communicate with sharp economy, condemn and console…although not necessarily all at the same time.
And now students will be able to study it at A level. The AQA exam board says that the new exam will be on offer from autumn 2013 and is designed to create
“bold, confident writers across a range of styles”.
We can’t ever have too many of those, can we?
Only a few weeks ago it seemed that school students were condemned to an English version of the Baccalaureate which placed such little value on creative subjects it could have been inspired by Dickens’ HARD TIMES. Now education minister Michael (Gradgrind) Gove has had to back down.
I only hope that his Roy-of-the-Rovers concept of history will also be reviewed.
He wants ” a proper emphasis on heroes and heroines” apparently…
I think that should be left to the fiction modules in the creative writing A Level. Proper grown up history is a good deal more complex…
Related articles
Creative writing A-level launches (bbc.co.uk)
5 comments on “Coming soon to a school near you: CREATIVE WRITING A LEVEL”
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A Good Confession
"Unputdownable" Miriam Stoppard
BRIDGET WHELAN writer 
that is so interesting, despair, the Uni system turned into job training. I should know, got three grandsons, would have loved any one of them to have taken English.
I worked for the ILEA as head of Community Educational Development for 15 years in Streatham and Tooting. The ILEA in my opinion as we knew it, so ‘many and varied’, folded so funding could be used only for subjects for which boxes could be ticked and exams passed. I had little schooling, one ‘O’ level saved me at 25. The OU saved my life at 35 and got a BA and MSc whilst working and bringing up two kids at 50 How I am saddened by the whole thing…who could do that now anyway.. sorry so long, bit muddly but one of my hobby horses!
I don’t have any personal experience of the long gone Inner London Education Authority but I have heard good things about it from lots of people.
It’s not just the narrow (often unrealistic) vocational emphasis I object to in the present government’s education policy it’s the lack of vision, lack of understanding how people develop and grow and the importance of creativity to the life of an individual and to the life of the country. But in all the gloom a creative writing A level seems like a very good idea
Yes agree to all that …would be interesting to see how this A level pans out, I was around when as a teacher one did art mixed with creative writing in primary!
Suddenly stuck in hospital all day! Luckily grabbed toothbrush. clean knickers and ‘A good confession’.
So far so good … now just back in own bed with good blood back in my veins and ‘time off for good behaviour’. Now of course totally hooked!
Love it …X
Hospital oh dear! Sounds as though you need plenty of bed rest and time with a good book, luckily you have one!!!
Ooooooooo! 🙂
Xx