Research Matters

As well as these writing-specific differences between the 2014 cohort’s educational influences and
those of the previous Aspects of Writing cohorts, another key government educational reform
occurred after 2007. In 2008, KS3 national testing was removed from the National Curriculum
assessments. Ofsted inspectors (Ofsted, 2012) expressed concern that this had reduced the
amount of new content being taught in some schools, reducing the sense of direction during this
school stage. It is, however, unclear what implications this has had for attainment at KS4 level.
GCSE English Literature exam results, for example, increased between 2008 and 2011 so there is
little evidence suggesting that this has negatively affected students’ learning.The removal of these
tests may have, instead, improved writing skills as it has been reported by Ofsted (2012, p.40) that
the “Key Stage 3 national tests encouraged teachers to believe that standards of reading were lower
than those of writing”, which “meant that schools spent…less time consolidating their writing
skills”. In addition, to compensate for this change in assessment, the government actively provided
support for teachers on how to assess student performance by launching the Assessing Pupils’
Progress (APP) initiative (DCSF, 2008a).
Further government attention on writing
Since the last Aspects of Writing report, there have been several attempts to enhance writing
performance by promoting awareness of effective strategies and research on the teaching of
writing.The implementation of the 2008 KS3/KS4 renewed framework in improving writing did
not result in many positive comments in either the 2009 or 2012 Ofsted reports from schools
inspections between 2005–2008 and 2008–2011 respectively (Ofsted, 2009, 2012). In contrast, the
Ofsted report prior to the renewed framework (Ofsted, 2005) presented a relatively more positive
perspective on the teaching of writing.The 2005 report concluded that in both primary and
secondary schools “There was consistency in teaching writing within English lessons” (p.27),
“the teaching of writing is more systematic and linked clearly to pupils’ experience of reading”
(p.15) although various weakness were also identified such as “pupils’ attainment in writing lags
behind reading and this has changed little in recent years” (p.10).Writing performance drew more
attention in the latest report (Ofsted, 2012) where Ofsted called for the DfE to publish guidance
on writing in a similar way to that which had been done for reading (Rose, 2006).The DfE (2012)
also published a research report reviewing research evidence on writing, including synthesising
international evidence on effective teaching practices.
Attention has also been drawn more specifically to boys’ writing performance, especially since the
introduction of the national tests which showed girls substantially outperforming boys in writing
scores (HMI, 2000).The government published specific advice on how to improve boys’ writing
(DfES, 2006a). Ofsted (2012) and DfE (2012) reports on English standards, however, still reported
that girls performed better than boys across all phases and levels of primary and secondary
education. Massey et al., (2005) observed some small gender differences between the writing of
their 2004 cohort but these were not consistent across the assessed features or across the different
levels of attainment. For example, girls used more sophisticated vocabulary and grammatical
structures but both genders made similar amounts of spelling mistakes and were equally likely to
produce grammatically acceptable sentence structures. It is interesting to examine whether there
are greater gender differences in sentence and whole-text features, especially given the continued
gender differences within English test scores and the focus by the government on improving boys’
writing.
8 | RESEARCH MATTERS – SPECIAL ISSUE 4: Aspects of Writing 1980–2014