The latest provisional latest is courtesy of AQA and it is as clear as any oxymoron would be:

Having jumped on the compulsory poetry bandwagon – you know, the one with the square wheels – they immediately had to reconsider as it fell into a ditch full of murky decision-making.

OK, I’m stopping with the figurative tangent. This is yet another variation on what had been a pragmatic decision from Ofqual that was probably the clearest decision they ever made as Ofqual. So the poetry anthology study is now an option, though unseen poetry is tagged onto Shakespeare as the compulsory element. I’ve lost track with how this fits in with the other big players so will just leave it at that. The argument presented is that poetry has a vital percentage element to covering the course, but I’m wondering how, in a pragmatic move to lessen the amount of text/s that need to be studied [quite simply because of time], the percentage allocations themselves could not be altered for this one year?