The government’s focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum overloads secondary school students and stifles their engagement in education, according to a House of Lords report that calls for major reforms.
Peers also warn that the current education system for 11- to 16-year-olds is too focused on academic learning and written exams, which they say limits opportunities for students to study a broad curriculum and develop “core skills”.
They say the government should significantly reduce the amount of external assessment of students during key stage 4.
And their report calls for the government’s English Baccalaureate (EBacc) performance measure of GCSEs to be scrapped.
The cross-party Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee said its inquiry was launched “in response to growing concerns that the present 11-16 system is moving in the wrong direction”.
It concludes that the “government’s emphasis on a knowledge-rich approach has led to an 11-16 curriculum which is overloaded with content, particularly at key stage 4”.
It adds that the extent of the material to be covered “hampers pupils’ understanding of core concepts and stifles engagement” and it calls on ministers to reduce the overall content load of the 11-16 curriculum.
The report also suggests changing school accountability systems by scrapping the EBacc and reforming the Progress 8 measure “to ensure that schools maintain an appropriate level of focus on the core subjects of maths, English and science, while enabling them to promote a broader range of subjects to pupils at key stage 4”.
EBacc in the firing line
The EBacc, which has been championed by former schools minister Nick Gibb, was created to give an incentive to schools to ensure students took a suite of academic subjects at GCSE. It comprises English language and literature, maths, the sciences, geography or history and a language.
The government’s “ambition” is to get 75 per cent of students studying the EBacc subject combination at GCSE by 2022, and 90 per cent by 2025. However, this is widely seen as unlikely to be met.
The committee said the target has led to schools adjusting their timetables and resourcing to promote these subjects at the expense of others.
It adds: “As a result, subjects that fall outside the EBacc - most notably creative, technical and vocational subjects - have seen a dramatic decline in take-up.”
The report recommends that the EBacc performance measure is stopped - including the 90 per cent government target - and it calls for all mentions of it to be removed from the Ofsted school inspection handbook.
Other committee recommendations include:
- Reducing the dominance of rote learning.
- Providing more opportunities at key stages 3 and 4 to study creative, cultural, vocational and technical subjects.
- Introducing a basic digital literacy qualification and a new GCSE in applied computing.
‘A system from the 1950s’
Committee chair Jo Johnson said: “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.
“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.”
Reacting to the report, Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We agree that the education system in England needs rebalancing. Government policies have prioritised a set of academic GCSEs, and increased the time students spend sitting exams as well as the amount of information they must memorise.”
This is “not conducive to good mental health or enjoyment of learning and has felt like an attempt to recreate an education system from the 1950s”, he added.
Mr Barton also backed calls to drop the EBacc, which he said would help “rebalance the curriculum”.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We’ve introduced gold-standard qualifications backed up by a new knowledge rich curriculum of key subjects like maths, English and Science, alongside the opportunity to study music, the arts and humanities, all of which will better equip pupils with the knowledge and skills they need for the future.
“We are constantly seeing the success of our reforms. Just last week, England was ranked 11th in the world for maths up from 27th in 2009, and in May we were named ‘best in the West’ for primary reading out of a comparable 43 countries.”
The spokesperson added that the planned Advanced British Standard will “expand the range of what our 16 to 19-year-olds learn, giving them the freedom to take a mix of technical and academic subjects, boosting their skillset and allowing them more flexibility over their future career options”.
