YES!
i am doing music GCSE and it should be a lot more fun now......

the mail on sunday is a rag , its anti irish and pro monarch and anti monarch , i putly hate that rag , but something of interest their

I've been standing at the station, in need of education in the rain." Discuss.

Noel and Liam Gallagher, the much disputed kings of Britpop and authors of that lyrical plea for education, have earned a place in the latest GCSE music syllabus.

From September pupils will be quizzed on Oasis and other Britpop staples such as Blur and Pulp in an attempt by examiners to make the qualification more contemporary and engaging for teenagers.

The move was questioned by supporters of more traditional music education who said that it would squeeze classical music out of the curriculum.

The cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, who has long campaigned for better classical music training in schools, said: "Pupils are exposed to this music already, so wouldn't it be more constructive to expose them to something they don't know? Children are missing out on a classical music education."

In the exam pupils will have to listen to excerpts of Britpop's greatest hits on headsets and answer questions on the structure of the songs, style of music, rhythm and what instruments are used.

Although 50% of the marks for the GCSE will still be awarded for classical music (between 1600 to 1899), the rest will reward knowledge of 20th century classical music, African and Asian music and an existing "contemporary music" section which will include the new Britpop module.

Previously pupils have studied contemporary music, but it was up to the school to decide what that included.

A spokeswoman for Edexcel said the planned inclusion of Britpop from September was part of an attempt to "engage" pupils more in the subject.


"Teachers like teaching it, they can talk to students about music that's relevant to them. They both relate to this kind of music and it's more engaging," she said.

However, a Britpop expert also questioned whether the music would be testing enough for 16-year-old pupils.

John Harris, author of The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock, said: "The problem that they may have is that from 1996 Britpop wasn't very interesting. It went back to the three chord trick, endless copying of the Beatles and the Who. By 1996 it had got very uninspired.

"Oasis were gloriously basic and made a virtue of it but God help the students in the classroom taking apart the music of Kula Shaker and Northern Uproar. There's nothing there."

Pupils preparing for their GCSEs now would have been six during the battle of Britpop, the 1995 race for a summer number one between Blur and Oasis, Harris pointed out.

"Britpop lost the lustre of cool three or four years ago. It's practically the music of their parents."

He added: "It amazes me that this is on the curriculum. The same guy who taught me about Mozart would suddenly go on about Parallel Lines and Blondie. That stripped Debbie Harry of her cool right away."

Teachers will receive advice on how to include the new Britpop module in April.

ooops

figures a subject i would hace aced but am long since outta school