Decolonising English Project - Ali Al-Jamri Reflection

My Context

When I signed up to the programme, I was quite jaded about the state of education in many ways. I felt that I lacked power as a school teacher to affect changes, despite having quite a lot of knowledge about anti-racism already. Across different institutions and projects, I had already participated in well-meaning attempts to apply anti-racist practice to teaching which had faltered for variety of reasons: lack of knowledge; insufficient practice applying anti-racism; institutional challenges. 

The course with LBU was therefore most refreshing in how it reshaped my perspective. The challenges are still enormous. I started drafting this reflection in the same month that the government announced polarising rulings on gender-neutral toilets, and Department for Education appointed just two men to revise the entire National Curriculum for England, bringing the question of representation sharply into question; I’m under no doubt that the context for both anti-racism and progressive, rights-respecting education is narrowing in 2026. However, I’m energised by my own capacity to do more.

Rethinking the canon, transforming my teaching

The change clicked for me in the session on 19th century literature, and particularly on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which we teach in my school. We were exposed to the shockingly racist Regency-era responses to Frankenstein and this unlocked a pathway towards an anti-racist approach to the text for me. We teach Frankenstein as a GCSE text, and all classes teach a shared curriculum, so I saw a huge potential for us through analysing this text with a decolonial lens.

The first change this brought to my teaching was in viewing Frankenstein in its context and in relation to the slave trade and anti-colonial movements in the Caribbean. I became explicitly conscious of the use of the term ‘slave’ in the text, and came to frame my teaching of the Creation and Victor Frankenstein’s relationship around the Creation’s pivotal declaration: “Slave… you are my creator, but I am your master; obey!” By analysing this through a decolonial lens, we can explore the societal anxieties Shelley was evoking when she employs the language of slavery and domination in the struggle between Victor and his Creation. This led me then to consider the link between the Creation and Shakespeare’s Caliban. Finally, my own reading of the One Thousand and One Nights led me to realise how hugely important these Eastern folk tales are in influencing Romantic literature.

Making changes, building impact

In the 2024/25 school year, I began presenting these ideas to my team to broaden their awareness and began suggesting curriculum changes to come. The buy-in of our department’s leadership team has allowed us to effect change with greater impact. Working together, in 2025/26 we have made the following changes to our curriculum:

1) Introduced the One Thousand and One Nights to both our Year 7 Myths & Legends and Year 8 Gothic schemes.

2) Replanned the Year 8 Gothic scheme to incorporate anti-racist ideas and pre-teach the concepts of ‘societal anxieties’ and ‘personal temptations’ with a direct view to using these to unlock a decolonial view of the GCSE text.

3) Planned our Year 8 scheme on The Tempest to incorporate a decolonial lens focused around Caliban, including readings of Une Tempete by Aime Cesaire, helping pre-teach a decolonial lens for the GCSE text.

4) Provided CPD and support to staff, notably through the Trust-wide training day.

Feeling the Impact: Confidence and Empowerment

The impact of the Decolonising English programme has been strong and immediately felt. Personally, I am more capable of addressing and exploring racism with my classes; the team I work with is also empowered as a whole to do so. The overall educational benefits have been communicated and accepted by the team, and there is a general buy-in to the topic. Students in Year 8 have been the most positively impacted thus far, and this will bear fruit when they enter Year 9 and study Frankenstein.

There is still a lot of work to be done in embedding this learning and making it part of our team’s practice. As well, I wish to start exploring more keenly how this looks like at a GCSE level, and to teach students to apply anti-racist lenses in their own essays to effectively analyse literature. Revisions to the National Curriculum are long overdue, but there is no guarantee that what will come will be what we need. Therefore, being part of such initiatives which allow us to organise as anti-racist educators is all the more important.

It has been a great year of building together. In the long term, I have an ambition to support anti-racist curriculum on a wider scope. Being part of such a network and continue to experiment, share ideas and develop my own understanding is an important step at this time to achieve it.

Example 1: An early lesson in the Gothic scheme introducing 1,001 Nights as a topic. These lessons gave 1,001 Nights an equal weight to western influences on the Gothic genre like Paradise Lost.

Example 2: A later lesson in the same scheme applying knowledge of this text to a Victorian classic (A Christmas Carol). Students were able to use their knowledge of 1,001 Nights to explore Dickens’ characterisation of young Scrooge.

Example 3: Trust-wide CPD slide including student work. The student had applied knowledge of slavery in Shelley’s context to her work.