It appears that OCR (an Exam Board operated jointly by Oxford, Cambridge and the RCA) have just announced a new English A-level programme , which has been developed in conjunction with the English Media Centre. Let's just take a moment to consider the level of subject expertise represented by these four groups.... Ok - to continue. According to OCR: The range of texts to be studied is the most diverse yet for any English A Level. It ranges from classics such as the poems of Emily Dickinson and William Blake to memoirs like Twelve Years a Slave and contemporary works including poetry from Jacob Sam-La Rose, Jez Butterworth's stage play Jerusalem, fiction by Jhumpa Lahiri and Russell Brand's evidence on drugs policy presented to the House of Commons. Personally, I think this all sounds rather exciting. The texts are certainly diverse, and allow for an interdisciplinarity (combining the study of culture, literature and language in ways which border some a...