The government wants to change how it measures take-up of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) to “incentivise” schools to take up the full suite of subjects.
In updated guidance published today, the Department for Education said it wants to move to a “headline EBacc attainment measure that incentivises full EBacc entry”.
It says it plans to consult this autumn on changes to performance measures that would be applied for the 2024-25 academic year.
However, it has not yet set out more detail about how the performance measure would change.
What is the EBacc?
The EBacc was created as a performance measure to incentivise schools to get more students studying a suite of academic subjects at GCSE.
It comprises English language and literature, maths, the sciences, geography or history and a language.
The government set targets for 75 per cent of students to be studying the subject combination at GCSE by 2022 and for 90 per cent to be doing so by 2025.
However, in 2022, just 38.7 per cent of students entered the subjects needed for the EBacc.
Other planned changes
The update from the DfE, published on Thursday afternoon, adds: “We will explore making changes to the headline EBacc attainment measure (EBacc Average Point Score).
“We plan to engage with the sector on this during the autumn, with a view to confirming the approach in early 2024. The change would be introduced for 2024-25 measures, to be published in autumn 2025.”
The update from the department also announces other planned changes to the GCSE performance measures for 2023-24.
It is planning for triple science and languages to become “headline measures” that will be reported on the main school page in performance tables from autumn 2024.
