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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Shakespeare can be worth teaching because his plays invite students to interpret challenging language, debate questions about human experience, and encounter drama through performance—not just printed text. Those benefits depend on how the plays are taught, and they are not unique to Shakespeare. A strong case for studying him makes the language accessible, connects the work to students’ lives, and gives them room to question its place in the curriculum.
What can students learn from Shakespeare?
How language creates meaning
Shakespeare’s plays can give students practice noticing how word choice, imagery, rhythm, and sentence structure shape meaning. Unfamiliar vocabulary and syntax can make that work demanding, but careful teaching can turn the difficulty into a reason to slow down, test interpretations, and support ideas with evidence from the text.
This is a case for literary study broadly, not a proven advantage unique to Shakespeare. Ofsted’s 2022 English research review says that studying literature can open pupils’ eyes to human experience and let them explore meaning, ambiguity, and the power of language. Other literary works can offer those opportunities too. Ofsted’s English research review sets out that wider rationale.
Questions about people and society
Plots involving love, jealousy, ambition, conflict, power, and fairness can prompt discussion about choices and their consequences. Students can examine how characters see themselves, how they treat others, and how a play’s ideas relate—or fail to relate—to their own lives. The point is not to declare Shakespeare universally relevant, but to let students make and challenge that case using the work.
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Why teach the plays as drama?
A play is written for voices and bodies as well as the page. Hearing lines spoken, watching an interpretation, or trying a scene aloud can help students notice how tone, pause, movement, and emphasis affect meaning. Performance can also give students more than one way to engage with a scene before they write about it.
Ofsted’s 2025 English subject report says teachers use opportunities to explore drama in relation to Shakespeare and other plays, but this usually sits within literature study. It also reports that schools rarely address curriculum requirements for improvising, rehearsing, performing, and discussing how voice and action shape meaning. The report notes that adapting a play before pupils know enough about it can lead to misunderstandings and weak retention. Its practical implication is to build a secure grasp of the play and its language before asking students to reshape or perform it. Ofsted’s English subject report discusses these patterns in England.
What evidence supports the case—and what does it show?
The Royal Shakespeare Company reports promising results from its Time To Act trial, but the findings concern one defined programme rather than Shakespeare teaching in general. In the randomized trial, 45 state-maintained primary schools in England were assigned to intervention or control groups. Intervention teachers completed five days of RSC professional development and taught Year 5 pupils 20 hours of Shakespeare.
The RSC reports that intervention schools outperformed controls on 98% of writing indicators. Its reported differences included 13.8% more sophisticated words, 24.3% more rare verbs, 20% more clauses within sentences and clauses at greater length, 18.9% more complex sentences, and 27.4% more emotion-related words. The organization says these writing findings are not yet generalisable to pupils’ wider writing practice, so they should be read as results from this intervention—not as a general estimate of Shakespeare’s effect on literacy.
The RSC also reports that intervention pupils scored higher than control pupils on its confidence measures: 17.3% for working out what to do next when stuck, 13.8% for confidence with language, 12.6% for taking a considered approach to work, 11.3% for seeing themselves as good learners, and 9.9% for wider problem-solving. These are programme-specific reported comparisons, not proof that every Shakespeare unit will produce the same results. The RSC’s Time To Act page describes the intervention and its findings.
The evidence supports a careful conclusion: a well-supported Shakespeare programme can be associated with positive outcomes for participating pupils. It does not establish that Shakespeare uniquely improves general literacy, critical thinking, empathy, or attainment compared with other literature.
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Why do some students question Shakespeare’s place in school?
Students may find the language difficult, the settings distant, or the emphasis on a canonical writer elitist or culturally narrow. Those are legitimate questions about access and curriculum choices, not proof that every student will respond in the same way. A paper by Purewal discusses the risk that compulsory Shakespeare study can alienate some students, including students from different ethnic backgrounds, and argues that teaching practices influence engagement.
The Education Hub frames the debate around relevance, universal themes, language, elitism, modern lives and beliefs, and the possibility that difficult texts can turn students away from literature. These are prompts for discussion rather than settled answers. The Education Hub’s discussion of “Why Shakespeare?” summarizes arguments on both sides.
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What does Shakespeare teaching look like in practice?
There is no single best play or method for every class. A peer-reviewed survey of 211 secondary teachers across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, conducted in 2017–18 and published in 2019, found that Macbeth made up one-fifth of Shakespeare teaching instances in its sample. Teachers’ choices reflected plot, themes, and analyzable characters, as well as practical factors such as the availability of copies and supporting resources. That is a snapshot of reported practice at the time, not a measure of what every school teaches now. Elliott and Olive’s survey of secondary Shakespeare teaching explains its scope and findings.
For any play, a thoughtful unit can make the educational case visible rather than asking students to accept Shakespeare’s importance on authority:
- Make the language accessible: introduce essential vocabulary and context, then let students work through challenging passages instead of reducing the play to a plot summary.
- Use more than the printed page: listen to lines, compare performances, rehearse scenes, and discuss how choices of voice and movement change interpretation.
- Invite students to test relevance: ask what feels recognizable, what feels remote, and who is represented or left out.
- Make room for adaptation and disagreement: let students interpret or challenge a scene once they know enough of the original to make informed choices.
- Choose texts with the class and resources in mind: consider students’ age and prior knowledge, the play’s themes and characters, and whether usable copies and teaching materials are available.
Does every school have the same Shakespeare requirement?
No single requirement across all English-speaking countries—or even across the four UK nations—is established by these sources. Ofsted’s English research review and 2025 subject report concern England, while the teacher survey covers England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Their findings should not be treated as a complete account of current curriculum rules in every nation or elsewhere.
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