Opinion with Phil Cleaves

England's educational shift towards a Hirschian core curriculum and the subsequent conception of knowledge as fixed, linear, and hierarchical has left the Drama and Theatre A Level untethered from its discipline. In its current state, the subject fails to prepare students for higher education courses and doesn't provide the knowledge or skills to thrive as a theatre professional.

It is a subject stuck in the shadow of English Literature after infighting within the drama community in the 80s resulted in a lack of consensus around the criteria that determine quality. As a result, the Drama and Theatre A Level, burdened by its ties with literature, became a slave to texts and written communication. The ‘theatre thinking’ that survives is reduced to ideas that can be summarised and packaged for the purposes of timed written exams. The very presence of these exams hugely influences approaches to practical work as time and funding constraints leave teachers with little option but to return to ‘risk-free’ practitioners, texts, and productions.