Headteachers’ leaders, exam boards and subject experts have all made their case for curriculum and assessment reforms, as part of a major government review.
The curriculum and assessment review, launched by Labour and led by Professor Becky Francis (pictured), chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, closes its call for evidence today. It will produce recommendations next year.
Here is a summary of the submissions from the schools sector:
Headteachers call for big changes to assessment
The two main school leaders’ unions have both called for major changes to the accountability and assessment system.
The NAHT said the multiplication tables check, phonics screening check and key stage 2 grammar, punctuation and spelling tests should all be “scrapped”.
It also warned that the national curriculum and qualification specifications are overcrowded and should be streamlined.
The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) has called for GCSE exams to be spread over two years, warning that the continuing reliance on exams is “damaging to young people”.
It did not recommend returning to a fully modular system, but said students could be allowed to take papers at the end of Year 10 rather than doing them all in Year 11.
ASCL also called for the scrapping of the “demotivating” and “humiliating“ government requirement for students to retake GCSE English and maths in post-16 education until they have achieved at least a grade 4. The union described these students as the “forgotten third”.
Both unions said the government should scrap the English Baccalaureate as a performance measure for schools.
Trust leaders want EBacc decision
The Confederation of School Trusts (CST), the sector body for academy trusts, said the review should make a recommendation on whether to end the EBacc. It sees Progress 8 and Attainment 8 as sufficient interventions to “induce” schools to offer an academic curriculum.
It did not call for any major reforms of GCSE or A level, but was “open to view that the aggregate assessment burden in Year 11 may be too much”.
CST added that the scale of GCSEs has been a concern for some since the advent of new specifications, but said that the national curriculum should continue to give all students access to “powerful” knowledge.
Its submission to the review also noted that when the previous government consulted on its doomed plan to create the Advanced British Standard (ABS) qualification, many CST members supported increasing the number of A levels taken by most students.
AQA defends ‘high-stakes’ exams
The country’s biggest exam board has said that the government should reduce subject content and the number of exam papers.
AQA urged ministers to keep the best of the system, arguing that “high-stakes, end-point exams” can assess entire groups of students fairly and reliably. It also said GCSEs and A levels provided respected academic routes and prepared students for further study.
However, teachers have told AQA that there is too much content in subjects such as GCSE history, or that some content - including in GCSE English language, geography and religious studies - is “outdated or mechanistic”.
Fears of overloaded curriculum
Several subject associations agreed that the curriculum is overloaded.
The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) said the curriculum must be “engaging and relevant” while equipping pupils with skills and knowledge essential for science.
English has been identified as an area particularly in need of reform; ASCL said that GCSE English language is “not fit for purpose”. This was echoed in the English Association’s call for “urgent reform” to English GCSEs and for reduced assessment burdens at key stages 1-3.
The English Association said it wants to see oracy embedded in schools, but added that this should not be the sole responsibility of English teachers.
The National Society for Education in Art and Design agreed that accountability measures must be reformed to encourage take-up of creative subjects, while the PSHE Association said it wants at least one PSHE lesson timetabled per week.
Teaching about sustainability
The Geographical Association said teaching around climate change and sustainability must be strengthened at GCSE and A level, while climate change must be a specific topic at key stage 2.
The Royal Society of Chemistry also said sustainability should be more prominent in the curriculum.
Subject specialist concerns
The Association for Language Learning said its members had raised concerns about the vagueness of what primary school pupils are expected to have achieved by Year 6.
It added that this “is also coupled with the lack of investment in sufficient and high-quality training of primary teachers for languages”.
The submission also highlighted modern foreign languages teachers’ worries about the impact of “severe grading at GCSE”, as highlighted in a recent Tes investigation.
The British Computer Society said in its submission that the curriculum must ensure that all young people leave school with essential digital literacy skills to understand technologies and systems and how to use them.
The Royal Society of Biology (RSB) said sciences must be prioritised in the review, flagging up concerns that the subjects were not highlighted in the review’s terms of reference or call for evidence. The RSB also advocated for a single route into GCSE science in its submission.
The Royal Society said the call for evidence “lacks the required vision”, and urged the review to go beyond “small and easy” changes to the curriculum.
It added that maths and data education should be embedded across the curriculum, and said GCSE resits for maths should be replaced with an alternative qualification.
Tories warn of ‘dumbing down’
Laura Trott, the new Conservative shadow education secretary, said she is concerned about reports that the review could recommend cutting content in some GCSEs, reducing the number of exams and scrapping the EBacc.
Writing for Conservative Home, she said: “In other words, if reports are correct: dumbing down the curriculum, undermining the three Rs, and undermining us in international league tables.”
She added that the EBacc, introduced by the 2010-15 Conservative-led coalition government, was a “response to children from more deprived backgrounds being put through non-academic subjects at the expense of the opportunity to have a full academic education”.
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