Hodder Education is removing access to all its GCSE and A-level magazines!

A couple of months ago, I tried to find an article on Othering to use for a class Harkness Discussion about the treatment of a particular character in a text we're studying. This was for an A-level English Literature class, so I wanted to encourage the use of precise language that they could use in their exams.

I wanted to make sure that all the students were on the same page before we started the discussion. That meant getting us all to agree on what 'Othering' even meant. So, I went on a bit of a hunt online and found this article on Hodder's The Sociology Review.

It would have been perfect for my class. It's pitched at exactly the right level for A-level students. It's literally written for them! Plus, it uses a lot of great words and phrases that they could add to their own banks for their revision and essays. Perfect!

But there were so many problems with trying to get hold of the article that I frankly had to give up. Other than only having a week to prep this lesson, I was just left despairing at what I discovered.

The first problem I encountered is that Hodder Education/Hachette Learning doesn't let you buy single editions of any of its magazines – including The Sociology Review. It also doesn't let individuals buy access to any of these magazines. You have to be set up as an institution.

I think there are some students who would genuinely love to buy access to the Hachette Learning archive, which brings me onto the next problem I discovered: you have to buy access to each magazine individually!

Surely, giving students access to an archive of all of their magazines would be a really good business model. It's my opinion that with the rise of AI and short-form content, it would be really beneficial for students to have a short-form magazine with credible content that they can check regularly? I would personally split it up into articles. Then, for a small monthly subscription, students or schools would be able to access the archive. I'd make it so that students fill in the exams they're doing and then they get weekly recommendations of articles to read.

Then there's the fact that you can't buy access to a single edition or purchase hard copies of the magazines for posterity.

But right now, it's even worse than just those things: Hachette are completely getting rid of the magazines, too!

After I tried to access the sites, I discovered that they posted their final new magazine this year and are in the process of phasing out access to the old ones.

I'm so gutted! This is such a loss of content!

If I could afford it, I would buy all the magazine articles from Hachette and then put them on my tutoring website for a small subscription fee instead. I genuinely don't know what's going to happen to them!

I hope they have a rethink about getting rid of the content, or sell the rights to someone else who will actually host the content they need.