3 January 2026
One of the most energising sessions at English: Shared Futures 2022 was the panel exploring the current state of secondary English education and the challenges facing the discipline in schools. As NATE (the National Association for the Teaching of English) representatives and classroom practitioners discussed during the conference, the picture is complex, marked by both genuine reasons for optimism and persistent structural concerns that demand attention.
The good news, as several speakers emphasised, is that the passion and commitment of English teachers across the country remains remarkable. Despite the pressures of accountability measures, changing specifications, and the ongoing aftershocks of the pandemic on student learning, the profession continues to attract talented individuals who believe in the transformative power of reading, writing, and spoken English. The conference heard compelling accounts of innovative classroom practice, from creative approaches to poetry at Key Stage 3 to ambitious whole-school literacy initiatives that are making a tangible difference to student outcomes.
The Challenges Ahead
The less encouraging picture concerns the structural conditions in which teachers are working. Recruitment and retention remain serious concerns across English departments, with experienced subject specialists increasingly difficult to replace. The narrowing of curriculum time for English in some schools, driven by pressures on timetabling and the perceived need to prioritise other subjects, was identified as a growing threat to the breadth and depth of literary study that secondary English has traditionally offered.
Assessment frameworks continue to shape what is taught and how. Several contributors to the panel observed that the emphasis on closed-book examinations at GCSE and A Level has created a culture of memorisation that sits uneasily with the discipline's commitment to genuine critical engagement with texts. The question of what counts as "knowledge" in English, and whether current assessment models adequately capture the skills and dispositions that make the subject valuable, remains unresolved.
Bridging the Sectors
Perhaps the most significant contribution of the discussion was its insistence on the need for closer dialogue between secondary and higher education. Too often, the panel suggested, secondary teachers and university lecturers work in parallel rather than in partnership, with limited understanding of each other's contexts, constraints, and aspirations. English: Shared Futures, with its explicit commitment to bridging education sectors, offers a model for the kind of sustained, cross-sector conversation that the discipline needs.
The conference's NATE teacher strand on Day 2 provided further evidence of the appetite for this kind of exchange. Workshops on spoken word poetry, diversifying the canon, and creative approaches to critical thinking drew enthusiastic participation from teachers alongside academics, demonstrating that when the sectors come together, the conversation is enriched for everyone involved.
Looking Forward
The shape of things to come for secondary English will depend in part on decisions made at policy level, over which the profession has limited direct influence. Curriculum reform, assessment design, teacher training, and school funding are all areas where the voices of English educators need to be heard more clearly. The conference provided a platform for those voices, and the challenge now is to ensure that the energy and ideas generated at events like English: Shared Futures translate into sustained advocacy and action.
What remains clear is that the discipline of English, at its best, offers young people something that no other subject can: the opportunity to develop their capacity for empathy, critical reflection, creative expression, and informed citizenship. The task for the profession is to defend and extend that offer, even in a policy environment that does not always recognise its value.