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Parliamentarians call for change
A House of Lords cross-party education committee adds its powerful voice to calls for change in schools, having concluded that the education system for 11–16-year-olds is “failing pupils”. Its Conservative chair says that change is “urgently needed”, with the current system too focused on academic learning and written exams, limiting opportunities for pupils to study a broad and balanced curriculum and to develop core skills. The committee’s report, published this week, is a response to “growing concerns” that the present 11–16 system is moving in the wrong direction, “especially in relation to meeting the needs of a future digital and green economy”, and calls for sweeping changes to curriculum and assessment for 11–16-year-olds and to the ways that school performance is judged.
The cross-party Education for 11–16 Year Olds Committee is chaired by Jo Johnson, a former government minister (and the brother of the former prime minister Boris Johnson). The committee’s report, Requires improvement: Urgent change for 11–16 education, argues that change is needed to the 11–16 curriculum and assessment model to create more space for technical, digital and creative areas of study and reduce the burden of GCSE exams. It also calls on the government to address the negative effects of the current school performance measures, including by immediately abandoning the English Baccalaureate (EBacc).
The report says that reforms introduced since 2010 have created a system that “now prioritises a restricted programme of academic learning, delivered through a narrow set of subjects and teaching styles. We heard repeatedly that this approach fails to take account of wider societal and economic shifts.”
The result, it says, is “an overburdened curriculum that necessitates narrow teaching methods such as rote learning and ‘cramming’ subject knowledge, particularly when pupils are studying for their GCSEs. There is also little scope to engage with topics beyond the curriculum or apply learning to real-world issues such as climate change, with pupil engagement suffering as a result.”
The committee calls for major reform to the 11–16 curriculum, including:
- reducing the dominance of rote learning, freeing up capacity for schools and teachers to offer a more varied, richer range of learning experiences and develop a broader set of skills
- providing more opportunities at key stages 3 and 4 to study creative, cultural, vocational and technical subjects, which will open up pathways to the full range of post-16 options and nurture core talent for the future economy
- developing and introducing a basic digital literacy qualification and a new GCSE in applied computing
- giving pupils the option to take functional literacy and numeracy qualifications at key stage 4 which are equal in value to GCSE English and maths
- embedding opportunities for oracy and communication skills development across key stage 3 and 4
- embedding climate change and sustainability education across the key stage 3 and 4 curriculums
The committee also calls for changes to how 14 –16-year-olds are assessed, including by considering proposals to significantly reduce the amount of external assessment undertaken by pupils and introducing more non-exam assessment.
And it calls for revision of how school performance is measured by abandoning the EBacc measure (the number of pupils taking GCSEs English language and literature, maths, an ancient or modern foreign language and either history or geography) and refining the Progress 8 measure to ensure that schools are able to offer a broader range of subjects at key stage 4.
The evidence we have received is compelling. Change to the education system for 11–16-year-olds is urgently needed, to address an overloaded curriculum, a disproportionate exam burden and declining opportunities to study creative and technical subjects.
Jo Johnson, Chair of the Committee
Immediate and longer-term reform is essential to ensuring that our secondary system equips young people with the knowledge, skills and behaviours they need to progress to the full range of post-16 options, and to flourish in the future.
Image at the head of this article by Dan Johnston from Pixabay.
