Could Richard & Judy do for A-level English what they have done for book clubs around the country?

Since the television tea-time chat-show hosts Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan began their Book Club on Channel 4 in 2004, it has become a fearsomely effective engine for selling books, capable of boosting sales by as much as 3,000 per cent.

Now one of the country’s most respected examination boards is hoping to capture a little of their literary magic by encouraging teachers to select any title from the Richard & Judy Book Club list for A-level study alongside the classics.

Instead of being restricted to books from a list set texts drawn up by the OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA) exam board, teachers – and their pupils – will have the freedom to choose pretty much any books they want for two of the four modules in the board’s new English literature A-level course.

Clara Kenyon, director of qualifications at OCR, said that giving teachers a free choice would help to make students more enthusiastic about English literature.

“The public has a real enthusiasm for literature, as shown by the popularity of initiatives such as Richard & Judy’s Book Club, which have been hugely successful,” she said.

“What they have achieved is to break down the perception that literature is dull or boring. But getting some of that enthusiasm into the classroom can sometimes be a challenge. While classic writers such as Shakespeare and Wordsworth are an important part of literary studies, the flexibility to tailor texts to appeal to the particular interests of a class of students is a real benefit.”

Recent recommendations from the husband-and-wife presenters include the latest offering from the crime writer R. J. Ellory, Sharon Osbourne’s autobiography, William Boyd’s Restless and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns.

The board said that students would be free to pick any three works, including prose and poetry, suitable for study for the “texts in time” module. A second module, literature post1900, will also give classes the freedom to pick three texts, one of which must have been published since 1990.

Each module will be worth 20 per cent of the full A level and be assessed through coursework of 3,000 words. Teachers will be able to seek advice from the board about what texts would be considered suitable.

The course will still require pupils to study at least one play by Shakespeare and work by at least one author writing between 1300 and 1800.

Join our books group discussion about A Thousand Splendid Suns

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