Student Survey: Clarity and Skill Development in Secondary English

The Research Question

The survey investigated whether secondary students understood:

• the purpose of studying English Literature;
• how to improve their performance;
• how literary analysis and essay writing work;
• which aspects of English they found most difficult;
• and whether clearer, more consistent theory would increase the value they placed on the subject.

The research was designed to examine a central hypothesis behind Wizardry:

Students may be asked to apply English skills to individual texts before the underlying reasoning processes have been made sufficiently explicit.

The survey did not test whether Wizardry improves academic results. It examined whether the problem Wizardry is designed to address was visible within this student sample.

The Student Sample

The survey received 93 responses from students in Years 9–13.

Year Levels

The median respondent was in Year 12, with an interquartile range of Years 11–12. In total, 90.3% of respondents were in Years 11–13, meaning the findings primarily reflect students approaching or completing senior secondary English.

Curricula

Schools

Eighty-nine students identified their school, representing 11 Auckland secondary schools:

• Auckland Grammar School
• St Cuthbert’s College
• Baradene College
• King’s College
• Saint Kentigern College
• ACG Parnell College
• Kristin School
• Diocesan School for Girls
• Glendowie College
• Epsom Girls Grammar School
• St Peter’s College

Auckland Grammar School was the largest identified group, with 28 respondents. The school distribution was uneven, so the results should not be interpreted as equally representing every participating school.

Finding 1: English Felt Confusing to Most Respondents

Students were asked whether they found English confusing in relation to examination preparation, improvement or the subject’s wider purpose.

64 of 93 students (68.8%) answered yes.

The Wilson 95% interval for the sample proportion was 58.8% to 77.3%.

The question covered several related forms of confusion, so it cannot determine precisely which one affected each student. However, it establishes that uncertainty about navigating English was common within the sample.

Among the 84 students in Years 11–13, 71.4% reported confusion. The result was therefore not driven primarily by younger students who had only recently entered secondary English.

Finding 2: Many Students Could Not Clearly State the Subject’s Purpose

Students were asked whether they explicitly understood the point of learning English Literature.

54 of 93 students (58.1%) answered no.

Only 32 students provided an optional written explanation of the subject’s purpose. Their responses referred to ideas including:

• understanding people and the human condition;
• developing empathy and perspective;
• analysing language and meaning;
• examining culture and society;
• strengthening critical thinking;
• and improving communication.

These responses demonstrate that some students possessed thoughtful conceptions of the subject. However, because the answers were optional and were not assessed using a predetermined coding framework, they should be treated as qualitative illustrations rather than quantified evidence.

The broader result remains significant: more than half of the sample could not explicitly identify what English Literature was intended to teach.

Finding 3: Knowing What to Improve Was Strongly Associated With Confusion

Students were asked how often they understood what they needed to improve in English.

Together, 65.6% of respondents said they rarely or only sometimes knew what they needed to improve.

This was one of the survey’s clearest relationships.

Among students with low improvement clarity, 82.0% found English confusing. Among students who often or always understood what to improve, the rate was 43.8%.

The odds of reporting confusion were approximately 5.84 times greater among students with low improvement clarity:

The result remained statistically significant after adjustment for multiple comparisons.

An ordinal comparison produced the same general conclusion. Students who found English confusing reported significantly lower improvement clarity than those who did not, using a Mann–Whitney test (p = 0.000449).

This does not establish that low improvement clarity causes confusion. The relationship could operate in either direction, or both may be affected by another factor. It nevertheless identifies improvement clarity as a strong candidate for school intervention.

Finding 4: Understanding the Subject’s Purpose Was Also Associated With Confusion

Among students who did not explicitly understand the purpose of English Literature, 83.3% reported finding English confusing.

Among students who said they understood its purpose, the rate was 48.7%.

The odds of confusion were approximately 5.26 times greater among students who lacked a clear understanding of the subject’s purpose:

This relationship also remained statistically significant after adjustment for multiple comparisons.

The result suggests that communicating the purpose and structure of English may not be an abstract curriculum concern. It may be connected to how coherently students experience the subject.

Finding 5: Difficulties Concentrated Around Transferable Skills

Students could select multiple areas of English that they found difficult.

The median respondent selected two of these five difficulties, with an interquartile range of one to three.

Overall, 85 of 93 students (91.4%) selected at least one difficulty involving textual understanding, analysis, writing, essay structure or assessment requirements.

The three most frequently selected difficulties concerned writing and analytical application rather than basic textual comprehension.

Paired exact comparisons found that students selected the following difficulties significantly more often than “understanding the text”:

The difference between understanding assessment requirements and understanding the text was not statistically significant after adjustment.

These results suggest that many respondents were not primarily blocked by an inability to follow what a text said. They were more commonly blocked by the transferable processes required to analyse that text and communicate an argument about it.

Finding 6: Students Identified Gaps in Practice and Theoretical Structure

Students could also select multiple limitations in the way they experienced English education.

78 of 93 students (83.9%) selected at least one of the three concerns most directly connected to Wizardry’s model: insufficient practice, unclear theory or excessive concentration on individual texts.

This result must be interpreted carefully. The answer choices were designed around the educational problem Wizardry investigates. They therefore indicate alignment between students’ selected concerns and the proposed model, but they do not independently prove that Wizardry is the correct solution.

Finding 7: Students Reported Seeking Additional Support

62 of 93 students (66.7%) said they had found their own external resources because school materials were not sufficient for their needs.

Only 23 students (24.7%) reported receiving outside English tutoring.

Among students who did not receive tutoring, 45 of 70 (64.3%) had still searched for external English resources. This represents 48.4% of the complete sample seeking additional help without formal tutoring.

Students who had sought external resources were more likely to report confusion:

However, this relationship did not remain statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons. It should therefore be treated as suggestive rather than conclusive.

The result does not necessarily indicate inadequate teaching. Students may seek external material for many reasons, including revision, extension, reassurance or a preference for a different explanation. It does indicate substantial demand for additional English-learning resources.

Finding 8: Demand for Clearer Theory Extended Across Curricula

Students were asked:

If English had a clearer, more consistent body of theory, similar to STEM subjects, would that make you more likely to choose or value English?

68 of 93 students (73.1%) answered yes.

Support was present across all three curriculum groups:

A chi-square test found no meaningful evidence that responses differed by curriculum:

Within this sample, interest in clearer English theory was therefore not confined to one curriculum.

This question described the proposed change positively and contrasted it with the perceived clarity of STEM subjects. It should be interpreted as evidence of stated interest, not proof that students would actually select English or that a particular theoretical model would improve attainment.

What the Results Mean for Schools

The findings point towards a connected clarity problem.

Many respondents:

1. did not explicitly understand the purpose of English Literature;
2. did not consistently know what they needed to improve;
3. struggled with transferable processes such as analysis, writing and essay structure;
4. and wanted a clearer theoretical foundation.

These are not four isolated concerns. They describe different stages of the same learning pathway.

A student who does not understand the subject’s purpose may struggle to understand what successful work is trying to accomplish. Without that understanding, feedback can remain disconnected from a wider model of progression. Practice may then feel repetitive without becoming systematically developmental.

This interpretation is consistent with the strongest relationships in the data: confusion was substantially more common among students who lacked improvement clarity and among those who did not understand the subject’s purpose.

The findings do not support removing close textual study or replacing teacher judgement with a rigid formula. They support making the transferable reasoning beneath textual study more visible.

How Wizardry Responds

Wizardry separates English learning into two connected components:

Pure English Theory

The transferable principles behind:

• close reading;
• language, form and structural analysis;
• interpretation;
• evidence;
• argument;
• analytical paragraph construction;
• essay structure;
• clear written communication;
• and evaluation against assessment requirements.

Practical English

The application of those principles to:

• the texts selected by teachers;
• curriculum-specific assessments;
• examination questions;
• unfamiliar passages;
• and increasingly complex independent writing.

Teachers continue to provide the texts, context, discussion and expert interpretation central to English education. Wizardry develops the theoretical foundations students apply to the material their teachers prioritise.

The texts are the changing projects. Wizardry develops the toolkit.

This directly addresses the three concerns most visible in the survey: unclear theory, difficulty identifying how to improve and insufficient opportunities for focused skill development.

Relationship to Wider Educational Research

The survey findings are broadly consistent with established research on writing instruction, feedback and metacognition.

A large meta-analysis of writing instruction for students in Grades 6–12 examined 406 independent comparisons involving 52,529 students. It found positive average effects from writing instruction and identified useful approaches including explicit writing strategies, goal setting, models, pre-writing, inquiry, peer support and instruction in text structure. The findings support teaching writing through identifiable processes rather than expecting development to occur through exposure alone. Graham et al., 2023

The Education Endowment Foundation’s guidance on metacognition recommends explicitly teaching students how to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning. It also emphasises teacher modelling, scaffolded practice and the gradual development of independence. These principles align with a pathway that helps students identify what a strong response requires and locate the next step in their development. Education Endowment Foundation

Research on automated writing evaluation has reported a positive average effect on writing performance, while also finding substantial variation between studies and systems. This supports carefully designed, timely feedback as a possible component of writing instruction, but it does not establish that every AI-feedback system will be effective. Fleckenstein et al., 2023

The wider evidence supports explicit instruction, deliberate practice and actionable feedback. It does not independently validate Wizardry’s specific implementation, which must be evaluated directly.

What the Evidence Supports

The survey provides evidence that, within this sample:

• confusion about English was common;
• many students did not understand the subject’s purpose;
• many students lacked consistent clarity about what to improve;
• writing, essay structure and language analysis were more frequently selected as difficulties than understanding the text;
• demand for clearer theory appeared across Cambridge, NCEA and IB respondents;
• and students frequently sought resources beyond those provided at school.

The statistical relationships strengthen the case that purpose, progression and confusion are connected. They provide a clear rationale for schools to test a more explicit approach to transferable English theory and skill development.

Recommended Next Step for Schools

The survey supports moving from problem identification to controlled evaluation.

A school pilot of Wizardry should measure:

• baseline and post-programme analytical writing;
• performance on a shared assessment task;
• student understanding of the purpose of English;
• clarity about what to improve next;
• ability to transfer skills to an unfamiliar text;
• student engagement and completion;
• teacher workload and usability;
• and differences between participating and comparison groups where practical.

Writing should be assessed using a defined rubric by evaluators who are unaware of whether a response was produced before or after the programme wherever feasible.

A pilot structured in this way could determine whether the clarity problems identified by the survey are followed by measurable improvements in analysis, writing and student independence.

Conclusion

The strongest conclusion from this survey is narrower than the claim that English is simply “taught badly.”

Within this sample of 93 students, confusion was common and was closely associated with not understanding the subject’s purpose and not knowing what to improve. Students more frequently identified difficulties with writing, essay structure and analytical application than with understanding the text itself.

Nearly three-quarters said clearer and more consistent English theory would make them more likely to value or choose the subject.

The findings support Wizardry’s central premise: students may benefit when the transferable theory of English is taught explicitly before and alongside its application to individual texts.

They justify rigorous school testing of that model. They do not replace the need for it.

TL;DR: The Most Important Findings

The central finding is not simply that many students find English difficult. Confusion was closely associated with two specific forms of uncertainty: not understanding what the subject is trying to develop and not knowing what to improve next.

This supports the case for testing a more explicit and progressive body of transferable English theory alongside classroom study of individual texts.