Every year since 2007, the Globe Theatre has run the "Playing Shakespeare" project, largely funded by Deutsche Bank. This has three main components: school-based workshops, CPD sessions for teachers and free performances for school students. From 2014 to 2016, we were commissioned to evaluate this project. In what follows, we reflect on…

This paper reports on findings from the author's Masters of Education project in which Classics as an after-school curriculum enhancement programme was offered to Year 9 pupils (aged 13-14) in a maintained school in Salford. The programme also incorporated excursions to supplement the extracurricular lessons delivered by the researcher (a…

"Drama to Inspire" is a timely selection of practice based accounts produced by fifteen workshop leaders and friends of the long established association for teachers of drama, London Drama. Many of the authors are internationally renowned for their work. Each piece affirms the immense potential for dynamic learning that is at the heart…

In a country in which, even after the economic crash, there are plenty of resources to go around, people need to think hard about why inequality persists so much more strongly in Britain than anywhere else in Europe. The cause, the author wants to suggest, is a set of deep-rooted, hidden and unacknowledged beliefs, each unjustified yet passed off…

Charles Dickens is arguably the greatest storyteller in English Literature and his novels have been loved and respected for nearly two hundred years. As accurate reflections of Victorian society they are unparalleled. Vivid characters and realistic settings are created in the mind of the reader, all laced with Dickens inimitable humour, wit and…

This paper examines the debate about the English literature canon in schools. It evaluates the importance of the canon in a 21st-century curriculum and considers its relevance to adolescent readers saturated in early 21st-century culture who have disparate identities and diverse backgrounds. The implications for teaching and learning of the…