RSC expands Shakespeare in schools scheme 

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is expanding its partnership scheme with schools across England to five new locations.

It will start working with pupils in Skegness, Coventry, Peterborough, Corby and Hartlepool to help them become more familiar with Shakespeare's work.

The RSC's Associate Schools Programme currently includes 26 areas of structural disadvantage across England, where opportunity in culture and art is low and where educational attainment and employment opportunities lag behind the national average.

The programme reaches 135,000 children and young people each year, helping them to build language skills by engaging with the richness of the Bard’s plays. It also aims to show them the range of job opportunities possible in the theatre sector.

The RSC aims to accelerate language acquisition, raise aspiration and widen creativity and critical thinking. 

A study is under way to assess the programme’s overall impact but teachers have reported that “children who weren't previously meeting expected standards now consistently are – because of how they're taught Shakespeare”, Jacqui O'Hanlon, the RSC's director of learning and national partnership, told the BBC.

RSC actors perform in the schools, as well as at local theatres involved in the programme, and the company trains teachers at participating schools in techniques used by actors and directors in rehearsals.

They guide children in acting, exploring characters and their language choices, and analysing the words to find their meanings.

“The language development of a child by age five is still the greatest predictor of whether that child can escape poverty in later life,” O'Hanlon said.

Children “get really curious about the possibilities of the meaning of particular words, rather than finding them scary or confusing”, she added.

“Time and again it's the children who have struggled with reading and writing who are absolutely captivated by these plays.”

It is precisely the difficulty of Shakespeare's language that can be life-changing, she said.

“It's all about giving the children the tools to decode things. They get a feeling of power. It's like unlocking a secret code. So they feel like they can do anything.”