This could potentially be an important set of lists as the QCA are the organisation used by the govt as experts in curriculum setting. There is also a certain amount of controversy (and quite rightly in my opinion) about the extent to which some schools are using 'extracts' for study instead of complete works. Extracts work well when studying areas such as structure and style but over-use denies the opportunity to study longer works; perhaps this issue is beginning to be addressed.
However there are some serious drawbacks as the lists say more about those writers' preferences and what they
hope every child will have the chance to read. From Motion's list I'd only place the Lyrical Ballads as suitable for young people as while some of the others may be readable, I honestly think some of them can only be truly understood with age and bitter experience (Wuthering Heights is the Bronte novel of choice if you are under 30, Jane Eyre if you are over 30
). There are other works which are challenging, but which will be of much more relevance to a younger person (e.g. Canterbury Tales, Songs of Innocence and Experience, Emma, Jude the Obscure, most of the Romantic narrative poetry).
When the representative from the RSL says "there were not many books that parents would not have read" I think he also over-estimates the level of literacy of most adults as only a small minority will ever have read Ulysses or Don Quixote; you'd struggle to find an English teacher in one of our schools who had read both of these!
I'm not so sure that Tolkien would have automatically plumped for any Shakespeare, and I think his list would have been closer to Pullman's than any other in this article. He may have wanted to see Beowulf studied, which I think would be a challenging but exciting text for say A Level students - it was often studied in universities here but is not so common now. I think the excitement factor would have figured strongly in Tolkien's choice.