The numbers of students opting for specialised courses in Media Studies and English Literature in the UK have been in decline for several years. How might we explain this, and how can we respond?

This article was written in the summer of 2024, a little while before the election of a new government in the UK. It remains to be seen how far the government’s promised review of the curriculum will make a difference to the issues I’m discussing here. The article was published in issue 36 of Teaching English (one of the journals of the National Association of Teachers of English).

The last time I wrote for this journal, around six years ago, it was to report on the threats to Media Studies posed by the government’s reform of GCSE and A-level qualifications.[1] For a time, it seemed as though Media Studies was unlikely to survive at all; and while that danger was ultimately averted, there has been a worrying decline in the numbers of students opting to take the subject in schools.

Coming forward a few years, it has been surprising and disconcerting to find similar concerns being expressed about the subject of English Literature. Headlines about the decline in entries at A-level and in undergraduate admissions began to appear in 2019; and by 2022, the situation appeared to be approaching crisis point.

In both cases, these rumours of our collective demise may be somewhat exaggerated (as Mark Twain famously wrote); but there remains some genuine cause for concern. My aim here is to assess the scale of this apparent decline; but also to explain the challenges we are facing, and to consider whether we should be rethinking some of our fundamental means of defence.

Doing the numbers

The headline figures here are undoubtedly alarming. In the case of Media Studies, there has been a consistent year-on-year decline in entries at GCSE and A-level for the past ten years. There was a small uptick at A-level in 2023, but this has since reversed. Over the same period, English has fallen from being the most popular subject at A-level to its current position outside the top ten; and the decline has significantly accelerated in the past three years.

It’s not easy to make sense of educational statistics. Comparisons over time obviously depend on when you locate your starting point, and on what you choose to include. In the case of Media Studies, we’re talking about an aggregated category that unhelpfully includes Media, Film and TV; while the statistics for English sometimes make it hard to distinguish between Language and Literature. In universities, there have also been changes in how these subjects are grouped and coded. As a result, estimates tend to vary. For example, some reports put the decline in English entries as high as one third, while others estimate more like 10%.

Trends at A-level do not necessarily mirror those at GCSE. Thus, Media Studies GCSE continues to decline, although at A-level it had a brief rise in 2023 after a steep fall over the preceding three years. By contrast, while numbers for English A-level have rapidly fallen, GCSE entries in English Literature have slightly increased (albeit by little more than the overall rise in entries), probably because it remains an EBacc subject.[2]

These figures are echoed by those for higher education. Two recent reports from the British Academy provide a detailed and multi-faceted analysis of the evidence here.[3] While the reports are keen to assert the continuing achievements of UK research in these areas, they are somewhat less optimistic about student recruitment.

Between the 1990s and the 2010s, Media Studies (under various titles) was one of the fastest growing areas for undergraduate study, most notably in research-intensive Russell Group universities. However, it has hit something of a plateau since then, and in the past couple of years the numbers have slightly decreased. Postgraduate courses remain healthy, although they are precariously dependent on high-paying international students, and are likely to suffer significantly from new visa regulations.[4]

English, meanwhile, has seen what the BA describes as a ‘precipitous decline’ at undergraduate level, although there has actually been a rise in Scotland (for interesting reasons, as we’ll see below). Postgraduate courses have continued to expand, especially in Creative Writing, at least for those wealthy enough to afford them.

Changing the subjects

However, the issue here is not just about numbers. These overall declines have been accompanied by some significant and unwelcome developments in how these subjects are taught in schools. Media Studies may have dodged the government’s axe, but the new specifications that resulted from the reforms were significantly different from those that came before. There has been a narrowing emphasis on set texts (or ‘products’, as some examining bodies would have it); a somewhat arbitrary list of prescribed ‘theorists’, whose ideas were accordingly reduced to bullet-point summaries; a marginalisation of creative practical production, and a removal of written coursework.

In the case of English Literature, we have seen similar restrictions in teachers’ ability to select content that is suited to their students’ needs; and a similar reduction of learning to a matter of factual regurgitation. A NATE report published in 2020 suggested that the decline in entries at A-level was largely due to students’ negative experiences of the subject at GCSE, with its retreat to an older literary canon and its increasing emphasis on learning facts and quotations.[6] As readers of Teaching English will be very aware, this has been accompanied in English Language (and combined courses) by a reduction in elements like speaking and listening, creativity and critical thinking, and a more narrowly performative approach to literacy.

Meanwhile, as other contributors to this issue discuss, the media components in English at Key Stages 3 and 4 have effectively been removed. If students no longer have the opportunity to analyse and create media texts – or even to get a taste of what that might entail – it’s hard to see how they might wish to engage with studying media at a higher level. Yet the exclusion of media further impoverishes English as well, undermining its ability to address contemporary forms of culture and communications.

It’s not at all inconceivable that there would be a knock-on effect here, from GCSE to A-level and then to undergraduate courses. The exception of Scotland (mentioned above) is an interesting one in this respect, since the Scottish system has not been subject to similar reforms. Numbers opting for Media Studies Highers and National 5 qualifications have grown significantly in recent years; and the numbers of Scottish students opting for English at undergraduate level have grown rather than declined.

But at least in England, English and Media Studies in schools are no longer what they were. The potential for either subject to engage with students’ out-of-school experiences and to respond to contemporary circumstances certainly remains, but it has been much reduced. And in this situation, it seems hardly surprising if students are turning away.

The bonfire of the humanities

These developments are obviously symptomatic of much broader changes in education as a whole. The commodification and ‘datafication’ of education, and the de-professionalisation of teaching, have been widely analysed. At classroom level, these tendencies have resulted in a reduction of subject content to gobbets of ‘fact’ that are easily assessed. Teaching is increasingly seen as a matter of ‘delivery’, which can be mechanised according to a pre-determined script and managed accordingly.

Of particular relevance here is the way in which ‘STEM’ subjects have been increasingly privileged, not just in political rhetoric but also in the funding of education. This is especially apparent in universities. Back in 2015, recurrent and capital funding for arts and humanities courses was savagely cut, resulting in closures not just in ‘new’ universities but also in some long-established ones. Goldsmiths College in London is merely the latest to be threatened by eye-watering redundancies – especially in subjects like English, for which it is particularly celebrated.[7]

The argument here is a crudely instrumental one. Ever since Blair’s introduction of tuition fees, higher education has been steadily marketised; and in recent years, arts and humanities subjects have borne the brunt as funding has increasingly failed to keep pace with costs. In 2021, the former Education Secretary Gavin Williamson proclaimed that the government would be ‘slashing the taxpayer subsidy for such subjects as media studies’ – a subject that is routinely singled out as an instance of what Williamson called ‘dead-end courses’.

The government’s principal metric for establishing the value of courses (and hence for allocating funding) is determined by the salaries of their graduates, often immediately after they graduate. Aside from anything else, this is a measure that significantly disadvantages those who want to work in increasingly casualised sectors like the cultural industries – although in fact the eventual salaries of Media Studies graduates are not very different from those of other arts and humanities graduates.[8] Nevertheless, it is hardly surprising if students are dissuaded from studying subjects that they are told will bring them no financial advantage.

In the polarised climate of contemporary educational debate, this results in an either/or choice between worthless arts and humanities courses on the one hand and STEM on the other. Meanwhile, the right-wing culture warriors now in the ascendancy are keen to present the humanities as havens of ‘woke ideology’ and ‘cancel culture’. You can still study English and even (gasp!) Media Studies, but it’s your loss.[9].

On the defensive: Media Studies

Inevitably, all these developments push us back on the defensive. But what are our grounds for defence, and are they any longer adequate?

In the case of Media Studies, there are currently two main arguments here. The first, which applies more strongly in higher education, is the ‘cultural industries’ argument. We are frequently told – not least by those working within those industries – that the UK is a global leader in this field. Estimates circulate as to the large numbers employed in these industries, and the overall benefit to the British economy; but it’s often suggested that the cultural industries are expanding at 1.5 times the rate of the rest of the economy.

Even so, definitions of ‘cultural industry’ are very elastic, and many claims about their economic significance are overstated. Such arguments seem to accept the valuation of culture in primarily economic terms – although quite how we might articulate an alternative way of defining cultural value is a challenging question.[10] In respect of education, they implicitly concede that the case for Media Studies – and, by extension, for any academic subject – has to be defined principally in terms of its vocational relevance.

The second argument here is the ‘media literacy’ argument. There’s a longer history to be told here about how Media Studies mutated into ‘media education’ and thence into an even blander and more anodyne thing called ‘media literacy’. But the argument now voiced by many commentators, and even some politicians, is that media literacy is the best solution to all apparently media-related problems – of which ‘disinformation’ is currently seen to be one of the most pressing. Media literacy offers a convenient – and conveniently woolly – alternative to the media reforms that are sorely needed.

The Department for Education, in its responses to the growing number of official reports calling for greater ‘media literacy’, likes to maintain that this is something that the school curriculum is already providing – which is a piece of disinformation in itself.[11] (Significantly, the subject of Media Studies is rarely even mentioned in these discussions, which often seem to be conducted without any involvement whatsoever on the part of teachers.)

This argument is one that overstates the power of ‘media literacy’, yet paradoxically underestimates the sheer difficulty and complexity of how we might begin to teach young people about things like ‘disinformation’. It also narrows the full scope of media teaching to a focus on ‘information’ and reduces it to an exercise in inoculation – a matter of providing the antidote to harmful media, an approach that media teachers superseded as long ago as the 1970s.

Both these arguments – ‘cultural industries’ and ‘media literacy’ – might be seen as useful and necessary ways of defending Media Studies, especially in the current context. Yet in my view they both concede too much ground, and offer too many hostages to fortune.

Defending English

By contrast, arguments in defence of English almost inevitably seem to go against the flow. Of course, one can make quasi-vocational arguments – English teaches us to write, to be better communicators, to be creative, and so on – but it is hard to claim that these qualities are unique to English. Even mildly progressive teachers of English would be loath to insist on the traditional Leavisite ‘mission’ of the subject – not least because this comes uncomfortably close to the views of their nemesis, Michael Gove (himself an English graduate, of course).

In a useful article, Joe Moran has attempted to find a way beyond these difficulties, but I’m not convinced he succeeds.[12] Moran rightly emphasises the critical dimensions of English: it teaches students to ‘handle stories with care, not just to accept without question their declared intentions and surface features’. He is very alert to the challenges posed by social media and the floods of digital ‘content’. Yet ultimately he falls back on traditional and almost mystical claims about the value of English. It is English, he argues, that uniquely teaches students ‘how to live’, and deals with the ‘big and ultimately unfathomable questions about the meaning of life’. I don’t believe we should ignore these kinds of issues, but do I think we need better ways of talking about them.

For Moran, the distinctive contribution of English is its focus on attentive ‘close reading’. Again, I don’t want to dismiss this, but I’m not convinced it is distinctive. Many academic subjects have their own version of ‘close reading’, including Media Studies. What Media Studies adds – and what English largely ignores – are more contextual (or, if you like, sociological) questions about cultural production and reception. While English teaching has increasingly addressed questions about representation, it remains largely fixated on the text.

The case for culture

At this stage, it would be good to pull a rabbit out of the hat. I’m afraid that will have to wait for a few years yet, at least for me personally. My aim here is merely to flag up the fact that we need some more persuasive and coherent ways of explaining why we should teach about culture, as well as some better ways of actually doing it.

At the time of writing (June 2024), at the absolute fag-end of a series of Conservative governments that have wrecked our education system, it is tempting to look forward to the new dawn that some hope will shortly be breaking. I’m afraid I am rather less sanguine about this. In opposition, Labour made some useful proposals about the structures of education, although even these have largely evaporated now.[13] Aside from a few generalised statements about the value of the arts in education, it has said nothing of any consequence about the curriculum or about pedagogy. By contrast, when the Tories came to power in 2010 they had a much more explicit and proactive plan for reform.

Teaching about aspects of media and popular culture has historically been a key dimension of English. It can be traced back to the early 1930s; and while Media Studies emerged as a separate subject in the early 1970s, English has always included a key element of media education – at least until recently.

The argument for Media Studies is not just for a separate subject on the curriculum. It has always been an argument for a revised – more comprehensive, more conceptually coherent, more rigorous – way of teaching about culture and communication in the modern world. Reheated Leavisism is not going to do the trick; but nor is an accommodation to utilitarian vocationalism or to the more vapid idea of ‘media literacy’. If we can’t find some better ways of justifying what we do, there may be nothing left worth defending.

NOTES

[1] ‘The strangulation of Media Studies’, EDM Summer 2018.

[2] I’ve used figures here from the FFT Education Data Lab (https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/) and the British Academy (see note 3), as well as press reports.

[3] English Studies Provision in UK Higher Education (June 2023) and Media, Screen, Journalism and Communication Studies: Provision in UK Higher Education (June 2024). Both are available at: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/policy-and-research/british-academy-shape-observatory/

[4] These are now predominantly non-EU students. Since Brexit, EU student numbers have fallen dramatically.

[6] Teaching English Language and Literature 16-19.

[7] See https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/11/the-goldsmiths-crisis-how-cuts-and-culture-wars-sent-universities-into-a-death-spiral.

[8] See the British Academy report (note 3).

[9] Nevertheless, it’s interesting to note that among the subjects that are doing much better at A-level are Psychology and – perhaps more surprisingly – Sociology.

[10] For a recent discussion, see Justin O’Connor’s brilliantly-titled book Culture is Not an Industry (Manchester University Press, 2024).

[11] A recent example of this is the DCMS Digital Media Literacy Strategy (2021).

[12] ‘Delivering the undeliverable: teaching English in a university today’, English 71 (223): 140-160.

[13] I’m thinking here of the plans for a National Education Service: see Melissa Benn Life Lessons (Verso, 2018).