GCSE English exams “uphold whiteness” and award students for saying “white is beautiful”, teachers have been told in a national body’s seminar.

All English teachers were invited to attend the session on “the lack of diversity in English teaching” last month by the National Association for the Teaching of English (Nate), which counts a third of the country’s secondary schools as members.

The online lecture, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, saw teachers urged to use the concepts of white privilege, white fragility and whiteness studies in the classroom and “embed” the teaching of the British Empire in lessons on all 19th century texts.

But far from stopping at curriculums, one section took aim at how assessments “aren’t race neutral” and lambasted the Government’s major reforms to GCSEs in 2015, which introduced more rigorous courses and replaced lettered grades with numbers.

Lesley Nelson-Addy, an English curriculum tutor at Oxford University, told teachers: “Intentionally or inadvertently, the GCSE assessment changes in both English language and literature negates the apparent need to explicitly engage with issues pertaining to race and racism, representation in literature and society, while at the same time upholding whiteness under the guise of universality.”

Last night, a former education minister described the claims as “abject nonsense” and “bizarre wokery”.

To illustrate her point, Ms Nelson-Addy displayed on a PowerPoint slide a mark scheme used for the 2017 English Language paper by AQA, Britain’s biggest exam board, which is still used by pupils for practice and mock exams.

A key feature of beauty

The tutor claimed the paper’s mark scheme “invites students of all abilities…to attain marks in exchange for reaffirming white skin as a key feature of beauty, and therefore social advantage” and criticised how its suggestions for answers “does not at all refer to colonialism or colonial injustice, that the text’s plot rests on”.

The paper asked students about an extract from The Tiredness of Rosabel, published in 1908 by Katherine Mansfield, who is widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s best short story writers.

On the mark scheme, examiners were told the best answers may spot how the author described the protagonist Rosabel as having “beautiful red hair and a white skin and eyes the colour of that green ribbon shot with gold”. The mark scheme said the character “has wealth, beauty and happiness, all characteristics of a privileged lifestyle” and “sound[s] pretty”.

But Ms Nelson-Addy took objection, telling the seminar that “intentionally or not the exam paper aligns these views about race with the students’ academic success”, and that “subtextually, to complete this assessment, students are awarded for professing the age-old ideal that white is beautiful, white is advantageous and therefore right”.

She added: “The text, the question and the indicative content allows and somewhat approves systemically ingrained traditional, mainstream and implicitly biased cultural ideals and scorns the desire or need to challenge these ideals.”

Ms Nelson-Addy was one of four members of Nate’s working group on reviewing literature who delivered lectures during the event on Jan 27, in partnership with TES, Penguin and the Runnymede Trust. Other speakers said that “we do our students and texts a disservice if the teaching of Empire is not embedded” in teaching all 19th century novels.

Sir John Hayes, a former education minister and chairman of the Common Sense Group of 60 MPs, said the session was “bizarre wokery”, adding: “The sort of half-baked things that these out of touch people say, though regarded by the vast majority as absurd, may be taken seriously by some without either the wit, wherewithal or the wisdom to cast this abject nonsense into outer space.”

‘Inappropriate’ approach

Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, director of education at the anti-racist group Don’t Divide Us, said the seminar’s “inappropriate” approach “denies pupils the chance to have a full, open, organic and undirected ‘first encounter’ with texts of established literary merit”.

An AQA spokesman said: “We always listen to feedback about equality, diversity and inclusion in all of our qualifications, including English. We also have an expert advisory group to consider representation in the curriculum and our assessments and resources for a wide range of subjects. AQA aims to ensure we are independent-minded and that decisions are informed by people representative of a range of perspectives.”

A Nate spokesman said: “The purpose behind this presentation was to consider broad issues about representation across the English curriculum and is part of a wider movement to explore representations of minority groups such as Black, Asian and minority ethnic people in the teaching of literature and in the curriculum.

“Teaching communities are asking for events like this to support their own understanding – and their students’ understanding – of complex and nuanced issues. The intention is not to devalue canonical texts but to contextualise and interpret them, which is the ultimate aim of all literary criticism.”

The Department for Education said: “Teachers are required to be politically impartial and should not promote contested theories as fact in the classroom. We have published extensive guidance to help schools meet their legal duties in this area.”