Exploring and embedding anti-racist and decolonising approaches in the English curriculum

My Context: Reading as an act of empathy

I didn't start teaching out of a passion for grammar, analysis or metaphor. I chose it to enact social change and combat ignorance. By viewing reading as an act of empathy, I saw English as a gateway to the issues I truly care about: social justice, gender equality, and the environment. I still see it this way. I still believe English is an antidote to the rising prejudice and ignorance in our society. In an era of social-media and rapidly changing-current events, it is more vital than ever to use the subject as a space to foster empathy, critical thinking and actively challenge racism and discrimination.

I joined Co-op Academy Belle Vue in 2024. As a new school, it had the unique opportunity to build an anti-racist curriculum from scratch. Initially, the unfamiliar texts left me feeling underqualified and outside my comfort zone. I felt motivated to become the kind of teacher that could teach in a school like this but didn’t know where to begin. Additionally, as the student body is predominantly Black and Global Majority (79.2%), as a white person, I felt I couldn't adequately teach topics like colonisation and racial inequality to students with more lived experience than myself. How could I be the trusted expert in the room? Fortunately, I was able to take part in the Decolonising English project and face this.

Impacts: Confidence, Subject Knowledge and Curriculum Development

As newly appointed Assistant Head of English, I wanted to introduce myself alongside this project with a Professional Development (PD) session on the subject of decolonising the curriculum. I used resources and images from the session focused on 19th Century GCSE texts, which was useful at looking at materials already being taught in most classrooms. My session aimed to highlight where post-colonial readings were not being pushed on a text but already existed within it and can further the teaching of it: Frankenstein. Without the project, I would not have had the resources, understanding or the confidence to teach a room of teachers about decolonising readings of Frankenstein, a text they would all be familiar with and have taught.

Exploring race, caste, and class in British Asian Literature

The South Asian Literature session at LBU helped my teaching and planning for Tanika Gupta’s The Empress and part of a homework booklet exploring Meera Syal’s Anita and Me. This text is particularly significant as the history and culture explored in it directly connect to many pupils at Belle Vue, 14.3% of whom are of Pakistani heritage, 2.1% of Bangladeshi heritage, 0.5% of Indian heritage. Engagement with this text is extremely successful; pupils love the characters and the subject matter. The success of this scheme can be seen in the responses to one of their assessments, where they were asked: “How does Gupta present prejudice in The Empress?”. Students were able to explore how the text represents race, caste, and class-based prejudice in an informed way, though my feedback encouraged students to think about the intersections between these prejudices more fully.

We have the power to change curriculums: sharing our work across the Trust

The workshops on South Asian and British Asian literature were crucial for creating my own PD session for the Trust INSET day. I created PD for other Co-Op Schools to attend, sharing our curriculum and building up teachers and leaders to diversify core texts. In the Decolonising English project, we discussed how ‘diversity’ is often ‘shoehorned’ into poetry schemes, taking up less physical space in the curriculum. I was emboldened by my work with LBU to negate that, highlighting we have the power to change curriculums. At the end of my workshop, I had many teachers from other schools reach out to gain further information on our teaching of The Empress, showing that the work done within this project didn’t just impact the participants, but the Trust more widely. I pledge to continue to champion these texts that are inclusive/decolonising the literary canon and edit the schemes of work to ensure academic rigor is also in place, as it can seem more daunting to resource, in comparison to other texts like Of Mice and Men, of which there are a plethora of teaching materials that already exist.

Staying with the discomfort

The session on African literature, specifically the discussion of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, was paramount in my understanding of the text. Never having studied it before, my knowledge was limited and in lessons some pronunciations or discussion of context prompted giggles and disapproving looks from pupils. Before the Decolonising English project, I would have retreated, felt underqualified. However, following the workshop, I took a different approach and discussed this head on, opening up about discomforts and allowing for respectful corrections. I never would have had the confidence to directly address this without this project and its early sessions where we dissected questions of discomfort.

I hope to build on this knowledge and have a better understanding of how to discuss Achebe’s intentions, specifically the nuances of his critiques of Igbo culture, traditional masculinity within it, and colonialism. I hope to include more contextual background so pupils can discuss purposes’ and writer’s intentions more eloquently as some responses are vague at this point (Item 4).

Looking to the future:

Evidently, my confidence and subject knowledge in delivering English Literature sessions that aim to decolonise the subject have evolved greatly. I hope to develop my practice even further by integrating more intersection approaches into our curriculum. For example, when discussing prejudice in Tanika Gupta’s The Empress, pupils can explore the intersections between discourses of race, gender, nation, class, and caste.  I am updating the poems in the poetry scheme to reflect a wider array of voices, and am making purposeful choices to ensure this is not just a ‘diversity’ tick box exercise.

Collaboration is key

Lastly, I am committed to having a space to share documents, resources and ideas. I believe with this project, we were able to achieve something that is somewhat missing from PD in Secondary Education: collaboration. It is well-known that barriers to teacher development are limitations of time, money and support. However, due to its importance, schools find time for the development of Teaching and Learning. We acknowledge that our teaching standards change; I would argue then our curriculum standards must too. Our reflection of the world around us in the classroom must adapt and change as the world does, so we must continue decolonising English.