Yesterday the government confirmed that it would continue to back the often-criticised English Baccalaureate. The consultation into this closed in January last year, and so its decisions have been a long time coming.
It’s clear that ministers have taken on board some of the concerns people had about having EBacc as an accountability measure. However, the main proposal remains: a target for the proportion of students studying at GCSE the five subject areas of English, maths, science, humanities and modern languages.
The government’s “ambition” is to have 75 per cent of Year 10 pupils in state-funded mainstream schools starting to study GCSEs in the EBacc combination by September 2022, rising to 90 per cent of Year 10 pupils doing the same by 2025. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that this was a Tory manifesto commitment, so it isn’t a huge surprise, but also that this is a softening of what was originally wanted.
Nonetheless, the announcement has provoked howls of outrage of the type usually reserved for those who would suggest that children be sent to the chimneys at age 8 like the good old days. In my personal experience, the criticisms that have stuck the most have been these three:
- It forces “non-academic” children into doing things they aren’t good at;
- It forces pupils to focus on subjects and learning that won’t help them in the future;
- It kills creativity, in particular damaging uptake of the arts and technology subjects.
My response to the first criticism is fairly simple - I believe that all children should be given a rigorous, knowledge-based, academic education until the age of 16 at the very least. This EBacc target should be irrelevant for most schools as we should be getting our students to study these subjects regardless.
I have written on these pages before about how children need to be taught the best of what has been thought and said, and the EBacc ensures that students study subjects that help to achieve this aim. It is not at all a barrier to a more technical education, as at the age of 16 children are perfectly able to say, “This isn’t for me, I want to do something else.”
However, to deny them the opportunity to do the EBacc before this denies them the chance to fully assess their options, and also to have a fall back should their other endeavours not work out. Ensuring as many as possible take the EBacc also ensures that children from every background, no matter how disadvantaged, have the opportunity to prove their academic ability.
No huge extra burden
And anyway, it’s not like this is a huge extra burden - apart from languages, most pupils are fulfilling the EBacc requirements already, and in 2000 nearly 80 per cent of kids took a language GCSE, so we should definitely be able to get back there in the coming years.
There are, of course, some pupils, for instance some with learning disabilities, for whom the EBacc combination wouldn’t be right, which is why I think the eventual target of 90 per cent rather than 100 per cent is right. But as many kids as possible who can should be taking it.
The second criticism is levelled not just at the EBacc, but also at the wider knowledge-based education movement that I am a part of. “Why do we bother teaching children about dead white men that have no relevance to their lives? We should teach children life skills, not useless information.”
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of knowledge and how it influences our everyday lives.
Children cannot build an argument, or hold an in-depth conversation, about a topic if they do not have knowledge about the topic at hand. The skills that are so widely promoted are useless if they are not underpinned by knowledge that allows them to exercise those skills. The EBacc is vital because it produces the platform required to ensure that knowledge is taken in - it ensures that teachers pass on as much knowledge as possible, and that children get the broad base of knowledge that can help them succeed in almost any field.
The third criticism - that the EBacc kills creativity and squeezes out the arts and other subject areas - is by far the most common, and the most potent. But my experience as a headteacher tells me that this is just plain wrong.
Ensuring that everyone who can do so experiences a broad academic curriculum until 16 is not incompatible with everyone also having time to study the arts or other subject areas.
No threat to the arts
At Bedford Free School, the school I opened in 2012, we have got growing numbers of students covering the EBacc suite AND growing numbers choosing art, music and drama, too. We’re only a small secondary school, with 100 places per year group, and we’re in one of the worst funded areas of the country, so if we can make it happen, I know other schools can, too. It is just a matter of priorities and taking these subjects seriously in key stage 3 so that they’re in students’ minds when they come to choose their optional GCSEs in Year 9.
And the fact is that the vast majority of schools do this, too.
The EBacc covers maybe seven GCSEs, but in 2015-16 the majority of students took between eight and 11 GCSEs, showing that there is plenty of spare capacity for other subjects. In fact, The New Schools Network recently revealed that the number of students taking arts subjects has actually gone up in schools that have a high proportion of pupils taking the EBacc, meaning that those who are embracing the qualification are also emphatically rejecting the idea that it would limit their creative options.
There is room in the timetable for both, and ideally, they should be able to complement one another. And let’s not forget, the arts and creativity in schools should never be limited to the timetabled curriculum.
As director of Parents and Teachers for Excellence, one of the things that I will continuously push is the way that so many great schools out there ensure amazing extracurricular provision for their kids. Clubs and trips are an integral part of a child’s development; so many schools offer and do a wonderful job in providing these. Bedford Free School recently got some coverage for our music work with the Salvation Army, whilst my successor Stuart Lock’s current school, Cottenham Village College, has an amazing variety of options for pupils to undertake.
In short, there’s plenty of room in the school day for creativity and the EBacc together.
I really do believe that the EBacc combination can be a force for good, and welcome the government’s announcement that so many pupils should be taking it. It’s a chance for all pupils to show what they can do, and many more children will enjoy a richer education as a result.
Mark Lehain is the director of Parents & Teachers for Excellence and the founder and principal of Bedford Free School. He tweets @lehain
Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and like Tes on Facebook
