A nephew of mine sat his English A level this summer. Ed has been passionate about literature since he was little, and I knew he had been getting high marks in his recent work. So when he told me he was learning quotations and practicing essays for his paper on The Tempest, I felt reassured that, at least in one expensive London school, the English A level was still alive and well.

Things started to become clearer, however, when Ed showed me his notes. None of the quotations was from Shakespeare; all without exception were taken from the works of the ‘theorists' whose writings on colonialism formed the matrix through which Ed and his fellow candidates were required to filter their responses. Not Prospero or Caliban, in other words, but Franz Fanon, Edward Said and Jean Aitchison, an expert (appropriately enough) on ‘language murder'.

It took a little time for the implications of this to sink in. The biggest divergence from the traditional A level, was that originality was neither encouraged any longer, nor even tolerated: Ed's own responses, however penetrating or well-argued, were largely irrelevant to this exam, whose apparent purpose was to pre-empt and control the pupils' experiences of the play, channelling them into a narrow band of acceptable ‘readings'. In fact, the more sensitively and deeply one engaged with The Tempest, the harder it was going to be to get a decent grade.