5-year update on inclusive English curriculum campaign

Has the ‘Lit in Colour’ campaign helped schools to make the GCSE English Literature curriculum more inclusive?

For many English teachers, choosing set texts is a balancing act between curriculum demands and time pressures. So, in 2020, Penguin Books UK and The Runnymede Trust set up Lit in Colour to offer practical support to help diversify what pupils read in the classroom.

The resource was a response to the mismatch between student diversity in England’s schools and the texts most studied for GCSE. While around a third of students are from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, most of the literature taught at this level has been written by White (and mostly male) authors.

Lit in Colour provided free teaching resources designed to fit existing schemes of work, alongside book donations to schools and libraries – all with the intention of helping teachers to widen the scope of texts they teach. These materials aimed to reduce workload, build confidence and make it easier to introduce new voices without sacrificing learning depth or exam preparation.

Has any progress been made?

Penguin Books UK has just released a Five-Year Progress Report that reflects on the initiative’s progress. It found a slight uplift, but there is still much more to do.

Some of the key statistics are:

the proportion of GCSE students studying books by authors of colour increased from 0.7% in 2020 to 1.9% in 2025
in 2025, fewer than one in 50 students sitting GCSE English Literature had studied a book by an author of colour
the share of set texts by authors of colour on exam board lists has risen from 12% to 36% since the campaign began.

Will this change in the future? The report estimates that:

at the current rate of increase, it will take until 2046 before one in ten students is studying a text by an author of colour
to reach a benchmark of roughly 38% of students (the current proportion of pupils from Black, Asian and minority-ethnic backgrounds) studying a book by an author of colour, at the present rate, might take until 2115.

It’s clear that significant systemic change is needed to achieve equitable inclusion of authors of colour in the GCSE English literature curriculum. Barriers cited include the cost to develop and embed the resources surrounding the books, along with support for teachers to “engage with themes of race, racism and empire where they appear in 19th century novels.”

Reading more diverse works benefits every student and the full report includes suggestions for exam boards, publishers, Government and individuals.

Read the full 5-year update report here

Discover more about Lit in Colour