School curriculum resources are being updated to cover rap and 90s grunge alongside Mozart and Beethoven in a bid to diversify lessons.
The Oak National Academy – an arm’s length body to help schools deliver curriculum content – has created new lesson resources for teachers that aim to represent the diversity of modern life.
The new curriculum materials for English lessons feature contemporary black British writers Andrea Levy and Winsome Pinnock alongside texts from the literary canon, such as Chaucer. It comes after calls to decolonise and diversify the curriculum in schools.
For music, the new lesson resources range from rap and 90s grunge to Mozart, and for history there are resources for interpreting the British Empire.
Research by Penguin and the Runnymede Trust in 2021 found fewer than 1 per cent of candidates for GCSE English Literature answered a question on a novel by an author of colour in 2019.
A separate survey in 2022 found that the majority of teachers in England believed more diverse and representative texts on the English syllabus would be of most help to their pupils.
