Bernardine Evaristo urges renewed push to diversify England’s school curriculum

Booker prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo has renewed calls for efforts to diversify the school curriculum in England, warning that young people are growing up in a society where “doors are closing” and the tide is turning against inclusion, she wrote in the foreword to a five-year progress report by the campaign Lit in Colour.

The report says there has been some progress in the diversity of GCSE English literature set texts — rising from 12% to 36% since the campaign began — but uptake in schools remains low, with just 1.9% of GCSE pupils in England studying books by authors of colour, up from 0.7% five years ago, according to the report.

It notes that in 2025 there were eight texts by authors of colour on exam board set text lists, mostly of Black and south Asian heritage, and says many teachers continue to offer familiar texts such as JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls because of a lack of resources and insufficient time for training.

Lit in Colour, led by Penguin Random House and the Runnymede Trust and partnered with educational and cultural organisations and England’s four exam boards, warns progress is too slow: at the current pace it will be 2046 before 10% of students answer a question about a text by an author of colour in their English literature GCSE, and 2115 before 38% do so, the report says.