September 2025 teaching English update
Welcome back to the autumn term.
I hope that you and your students had a positive experience on results days and that you’re feeling well-prepared for the term ahead.
I look forward to supporting you in the post-results period and the start of the 2025-2026 school year.
Best wishes
Clare Haviland
This month’s update includes:
-What to get inspired about this academic year
-Neglected resources to start the year with a fizz
-Reminder to join one of our English Facebook groups for teachers
-Exam insights training and ‘all set’ events (live and pre-recorded)
-Provision for lower-attaining students at KS4
-Updated question summaries, padlock release and updated training playlists
-Results support and specification updates for Int GCSE and A level (see August update).
Events
National Year of Reading 2026
How will you use this opportunity to get your students reading more?
Register now to get organised for 2026.
EMC A level student conferences
The EMC is recognised as an excellent training provider with their USP being that everything on offer is really practical and ready to implement in the classroom.
Take your students to their conferences if you can:
-Discovering Literature, 13 November 2025
-Language Conference for students, 27 November 2025
-Poems of the Decade student conference, 9 December 2025
Booking opens soon.
British Library Oscar Wilde study day for A level students, 16 October 2025
Read more about this truly fantastic free event.
Have you used these recently?
BBC Bitesize
There are excellent resources for our GCSE English Literature texts, including those added as part of Lit in Colour.
View resources
Transform English Teaching with Multimedia Resources from the Educational Recording Agency (ERA)
The ERA Licence provides seamless access to television and radio recordings, offering a single point of clearance for the rights needed to create and use authentic media resources in your classroom. With ERA’s free video streaming platform, licensed institutions can explore a rich library of curriculum-mapped TV and radio clips.
To access this free resource registration is required - but is quick and simple. State schools in England are licensed under a central agreement with the DfE and the vast majority of independent schools also hold a current ERA Licence.
Register now
See for example, Lucy Hobb’s adaptation for ‘A Christmas Carol’
This is a good time to join one of our English teachers' Facebook groups. As well as being sure never to miss any news about specification changes, new resources or training, you will be able to reach out to other teachers delivering the same qualifications as you to share advice and resources.
After processing your students’ results, you may wish to attend an ‘Exam Insights’ training session to get feedback from our examiners on the question papers your students sat in June 2025 to inform teaching of your next cohorts.
Book onto free ‘Exam Insights’ training
Free 'all set' events
Each autumn we offer ‘all set’ support sessions to provide you with an update for the coming academic year. These sessions inform you about any changes to specifications or processes such as coursework or SLE submissions; forthcoming training; reminders of key dates and actions expected of teachers through the year.
Watch the pre-recorded ‘all set’ events at your convenience:
GCSE
International GCSE
A level
Book onto a free live ‘all set’ support session
Interested in offering the Entry Level Certificate?
Watch the ‘Quick start’ recording.
Attend a live ‘Quick start’ ELC for English and Maths on 16 September 2025.
Functional Skills
Attend some of the fantastic range of events available in the Functional Skills ‘Festival of Functionality’.
The question papers, mark schemes and examiner reports from the June 2025 exam series can be accessed on our website with your Edexcel Online login.
After each exam series I update the question summaries for every English qualification (GCSE, Int GCSE and A level).
Access question summaries
On 1 August 2025, we removed the padlocks from assessment material from June 2024 in accordance with our assessment publication policy.
New recordings available on our training playlists
As many of our training events make use of secure assessment material, the release of the padlocks allows us to publish valuable training from last academic year on our playlists.
Catch up on the training recordings:
GCSE playlists
Language 1EN0
Language 2.0
Literature
International GCSE & IAL
A level
Literature
Language
Language and Literature
Please do read my August update for:
-Results support for each qualification.
-A summary of minor changes to a number of specifications and associated
documents.
-A reminder about what to expect from exam questions in future exam series.
Subject advisor
Clare Haviland
English
