The government’s English Baccalaureate subject target at GCSE is “done for” and “will be quietly phased out” because not enough pupils are studying a modern language for it to be met, a new report claims today.
The report, looking ahead to this week’s GCSE results, has suggested the measure will be succeeded by Attainment 8, which “allows for a wider range of subjects and does not depend on taking a language”.
The prediction is made by Professor Alan Smithers in his report published by the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Education and Employment Research (CEER).
The EBacc is made up of English language and literature, double science, maths, a humanities subject and a modern foreign language.
It was created as a performance measure in 2011 by the government to encourage schools to ensure more pupils study traditional academic subjects.
Speaking ahead of GCSE results day this Thursday, Professor Smithers said that ”provisional entries for GCSEs in England suggest there is no great revival of interest” in modern languages.
He said: “I think EBacc is done for and will be quietly phased out. There is already a successor in place, Attainment 8, which allows for a wider range of subjects and does not depend on taking a language.”
He also said that the “reluctance of young people to study a foreign language” had “dashed the government’s attempt to create a core key stage 4 curriculum of five subjects”.
Last year, Natasha Plaister, a statistician at FFT Education Datalab, said: “Languages have always been the subject struggling to make up the numbers since the EBacc formed.”
Ms Plaister said one reason for the fall in language entries was that the marking for the subjects was “too harsh” and that students feel they could achieve a higher grade elsewhere.
Writing in Tes last year, Jack Worth, lead economist at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), said that there could be the option to “remove MFL from the EBacc altogether and replace it with something else that is more ‘popular’”.
He highlighted figures from the Department for Education released last November, which revealed that in 2021, 87.3 per cent of students were missing the languages component.
This figure was an increase on 86.9 per cent in 2020 and 86 per cent in 2019.
The government had set a target for 75 per cent of students to be studying the EBacc subject combination at GCSE by 2022, and 90 per cent by 2025.
However, data released last year revealed that just 38.7 per cent of students were entered for all the subjects that comprise the EBacc in 2021 - representing another year of declining numbers.
Attainment 8 is a method for tracking a student’s academic performance in a secondary school. It was introduced alongside Progress 8 as a performance measure for schools by the Department for Education in 2016.
It does not require a language and subject groupings are separated into “buckets”.
Attainment 8 measures the achievement of a pupil across eight qualifications including maths and English, which are given double weight, three qualifications that count in the EBacc measure and three further qualifications that can be GCSE qualifications (including EBacc subjects) or any other non-GCSE qualifications on a Department for Education-approved list.
Progress 8 was introduced amid concerns that the previous GCSE performance measure - the proportion of pupils achieving at least five A* to C grades including maths and English - was encouraging schools to focus on pupils on the C/D borderline.
Top GCSE grades set to fall
This week’s results will be the first GCSE grades based on exams since 2019, before the Covid pandemic.
Like A levels last week, the proportion of students receiving the top grades at GCSE is expected to drop as part of the plan to return to pre-pandemic grading levels.
Professor Smithers says this will mean a record drop in the top GCSE grades this year as part of the two-step plan to return to a “pre-pandemic profile”.
This year, grades are being pitched at a midway point between the pre-pandemic levels of 2019 and the results in 2021.
Professor Smithers said: “In 2022, we can reasonably expect to see a drop in top grades, with many more failing to reach the pass level (C/4). In England, the biggest percentage fall will be at Grade 9 and many more will fall below Grade 4.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said that GCSE grades this week will be higher than in 2019 but lower than in 2021 “in line with the plans set out by Ofqual last autumn, and as part of the transition back to pre-pandemic grading levels”.
“Students who collect results on Thursday will have the best ever range of options in front of them - whether it’s studying an exciting new T Level, earning while learning on an apprenticeship, or taking A levels - and can be reassured that whatever their preferred destination, schools, colleges and employers are aware of the grading arrangements this year and adapting accordingly.”
