Diversification in action: Lit in Colour

Exam boards are (perhaps belatedly) looking to increase the diversity of play texts studied at GCSE and A Level in Drama and English: last July, Edexcel added four new set texts to its GCSE specification to offer more diversity to students studying the course and provide greater access to global majority playwrights. More recently, AQA have followed suit, updating its GCSE and A Level Drama set texts to allow pupils more access to diverse writers.

The facts are shocking and make for awkward reading: 34.4 per cent of students in the UK are from a global majority background and yet only 0.7 per cent of all students study a book by a writer of colour at GCSE, with 0.1 per cent studying a book by a woman of colour at GCSE. At most, 7 per cent of students study a book by a woman at GCSE. This research forms part of a project – Lit in Colour – being carried out by Penguin Random House in partnership with the Runnymede Trust, the UK's leading independent race equality think tank. Bloomsbury, under its Methuen Drama imprint, has joined forces as a partner for the campaign and aims to work with schools to introduce new plays that will create more representative and inclusive drama experiences for students.