AQA Anthology

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (the AQA) has produced Anthologies for GCSE English and English Literature studied in English schools. This follows on from AQA's predecessor organisations; Northern Examinations and Assessment Board (NEAB) and Southern Examining Group (SEG).

The 2008 edition of the AQA Anthology.

2004 Anthology

The first AQA Anthology was a collection of poems and short texts. The anthology was split into several sections covering poems from other cultures, the poetry of Seamus Heaney,[1] Gillian Clarke, Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage, and a bank of pre-1914 poems. There was also a section of prose pieces, which could have been studied in schools which had chosen not to study a separate set text.

English: Poems from Other Cultures
Seamus Heaney

GCSE English students studied all of the poems in either cluster and answered a question on them in Section A of Paper 2. In 2005, Andrew Cunningham, an English teacher at Charterhouse School complained in the Telegraph that the inclusion of the poems represented an "obsession with multi-culturalism".[2]

Cluster 1

Cluster 2

English Literature: Poetry

Seamus Heaney
  • "Storm on the Island"
  • "Perch"
  • "Blackberry-Picking"
  • "Death of a Naturalist"
  • "Digging"
  • "Mid-Term Break"
  • "Follower"
  • "At a Potato Digging"

Gillian Clarke
  • "Catrin"
  • "Baby-sitting"
  • "Mali"
  • "A Difficult Birth, Easter 1998"
  • "The Field Mouse"
  • "October"
  • "On The Train"
  • "Cold Knap Lake"

Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy.

Simon Armitage
  • from Book of Matches, “Mother, any distance greater than a single span”
  • from Book of Matches, “My father thought it...”
  • "Homecoming"
  • "November"
  • "Kid"
  • from Book of Matches, “Those bastards in their mansions”
  • from Book of Matches, “I've made out a will; I'm leaving myself”
  • "Hitcher"
  • "The Manhunt"

Pre-1914 Poetry Bank

English Literature: Prose

2008 Anthology

In 2008 the Anthology was reissued without "Education for Leisure" following complaints about its reference to knives and concerns about rising levels of knife crime in schools.[3] In the new Anthology the poem was replaced with a "This page is left intentionally blank" notice. After removing "Education for Leisure" from the anthology the exam board was accused of censorship.[4]

2015 Anthology

The third anthology was produced for first assessment in 2017.

The anthology includes poems under the heading "Moon on the Tides" and prose under the heading "Sunlight on the Grass".[5] Some of the poems are by authors of poems in the first anthology such as Agard and Armitage.

Poems
  • 'The Clown Punk' by Simon Armitage
  • 'Checking Out Me History' by John Agard
  • 'Horse Whisperer' by Andrew Forster
  • 'Medusa' by Carol Ann Duffy
  • 'Singh Song!' by Daljit Nagra
  • 'Brendon Gallacher' by Jackie Kay
  • 'Give' by Simon Armitage
  • 'Les Grands Seigneurs' by Dorothy Molloy
  • 'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • 'My Last Duchess' by Robert Browning
  • 'The River God' by Stevie Smith
  • 'The Hunchback in the Park' by Dylan Thomas
  • 'The Ruined Maid' by Thomas Hardy
  • 'Casehistory: Alison (head injury)' by U. A. Fanthorpe
  • 'On a Portrait of a Deaf Man' by John Betjeman
  • 'The Blackbird of Glanmore' by Seamus Heaney
  • 'A Vision' by Simon Armitage
  • 'The Moment' by Margaret Atwood
  • 'Cold Knap Lake' by Gillian Clarke
  • 'Price We Pay for the Sun' by Grace Nichols
  • 'Neighbours' by Gillian Clarke
  • 'Crossing the Loch' by Kathleen Jamie
  • 'Hard Water' by Jean Sprackland
  • 'London' by William Blake
  • 'The Prelude' extract by William Wordsworth
  • 'The Wild Swans at Coole' by W. B. Yeats
  • 'Spellbound' by Emily Brontë
  • 'Below the Green Corrie' by Norman MacCaig
  • 'Storm in the Black Forest' by D. H. Lawrence
  • 'Wind' by Ted Hughes
  • 'Flag' by John Agard
  • 'Out of the Blue' extract by Simon Armitage
  • 'Mametz Wood' by Owen Sheers
  • 'The Yellow Palm' by Robert Minhinnick
  • 'The Right Word' by Imtiaz Dharker
  • 'At the Border' by Choman Hardi
  • 'Belfast Confetti' by Ciaran Carson
  • 'Poppies' by Jane Weir
  • 'Futility' by Wilfred Owen
  • 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' by Alfred Tennyson
  • 'Bayonet Charge' by Ted Hughes
  • 'The Falling Leaves' by Margaret Postgate Cole
  • 'Come On, Come Back' by Stevie Smith
  • 'next to of course god america i' by E. E. Cummings
  • 'Hawk Roosting' by Ted Hughes
  • 'The Manhunt' by Simon Armitage
  • 'Hour' by Carol Ann Duffy
  • 'In Paris With You' by James Fenton
  • 'Quickdraw' by Carol Ann Duffy
  • 'Ghazal' by Mimi Khalvati
  • 'Brothers' by Andrew Forster
  • 'Praise Song for My Mother' by Grace Nichols
  • 'Harmonium' by Simon Armitage
  • Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
  • Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  • 'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell
  • 'The Farmer's Bride' by Charlotte Mew
  • 'Sister Maude' by Christina Rossetti
  • 'Nettles' by Vernon Scannell
  • 'Born Yesterday' by Philip Larkin

Modern Prose

References
  1. "Teachit.co.uk". Archived from the original on 2011-08-20. Retrieved 2009-08-20.
  2. Cunningham, Andrew (2005-12-17). "No prayers nor bells for the finest". ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2019-12-22.
  3. The Guardian (4 September 2008). "Top exam board asks schools to destroy book containing knife poem". Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  4. Curtis, Polly; editor, education (2008-09-03). "Top exam board asks schools to destroy book containing knife poem". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-12-22.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  5. AQA, https://anthology.aqa.org.uk/ Archived 2017-06-03 at the Wayback Machine
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