Can scripted drama raise attainment at Key Stages 4 and 5?
Scripted drama has already been used to develop a more analytical approach to GCSE and A Level History. In 2005, an AS Level History class at South Hunsley School, Melton, East Yorkshire was revising the Wars of the Roses using scripted drama (for the OCR A Level syllabus 7835). The students argued about where medieval lords would stand at the Regency Council meeting in 1422 and a heated discussion of the factional schisms among the nobility at the time of Henry VI’s accession took place, with students desperately searching the textbooks for evidence to reinforce their arguments. Days later, they were still arriving in lessons with evidence they had researched at home. The Wars of the Roses was a document analysis paper so this heated class discussion was a timely rehearsal of source work skills; performance in the document paper showed significant improvement between 2004 and 2009, the period in which scripted drama was used as a revision method. It is difficult to measure the impact
