What are 16-year-olds supposed to learn by making posters?

My niece, Lara, 15, has a mind like a surgical blade. On any subject, from calculus to The X Factor, she finds the heart of the issue and dissects it with alarming ease. Lara makes mincemeat of homework, trailing A grades, which is why it was so odd to find her stumped two weeks ago. The trouble was with her English language GCSE. As part of her coursework (controlled assessment) she had to comment on a pamphlet, produced by a charity, about volunteering.

On the cover of the pamphlet was a slogan in a pink circle, and Lara’s dilemma was this. She said: I’ll get points if I write that the circle symbolises something, an unbroken ring of trust, or the fullness of life. But I mean, the truth is, someone at the charity just chose a circle at random, didn’t they? So what should I say? Then she looked me in the eye. And why, she said, are we studying pamphlets, not like, great novels or poems? I mean, what’s the point?

In the fortnight since I last saw Lara, her question has been worrying away at me. It’s had me casting about online, looking at teaching websites, sometimes chittering rat-like with rage. But I do now have the beginnings of an answer. That pamphlet is not an isolated phenomenon, I don’t think, but best thought of as a local outbreak of a national virus that’s been infecting the minds of teachers for over a decade. Chief among the virus’s symptoms is a strange passion for requiring children to both study and make pamphlets and posters.

State schools, private schools, council-run or independent, they’re all at it. I’m not for a minute suggesting that six-year-olds shouldn’t colour in, but these are 16-year-olds — and it’s their GCSEs.