The curriculum review: dumbing down?
Next week we’re expecting the interim report of the Curriculum and Assessment review.
The goal of the review is a little unclear. On the assessment side, there are several unions that would like to see fewer assessments and exams in schools like SATs in year 6, and it is unclear whether ministers will agree to this.
On the curriculum side, probably the clearest sense that we have had from ministers is their belief that schools have become too academically-focussed.
The review’s terms of reference talk about:
“A broader curriculum, so that children and young people do not miss out on subjects such as music, art, sport and drama, as well as vocational subjects.”
That sounds nice. But where is the time to do more of these things going to come from? It’s easy to say schools should do more of something - but there’s only so many hours in the day: so what are they going to do less of in exchange?
I asked someone involved in the Review that question: where they were going to find the time for ministers’ priorities? They smiled and said that was the big question.
Probably the most likely way to find the extra time would be to get schools spending less time on the academic subjects, by changing accountability measures or by reducing the content of the academic subjects.
Ominously, when we have repeatedly pressed ministers to rule out dumbing down or hacking back the content of core academic subjects they have declined on several occasions to give us that reassurance. Uh oh.
The context
Why does this matter? England has gone up the international education league tables - not just relative to other countries, but to Scotland and Wales too.
As well as general improvement, part of the reason has been a greater focus on core academic subjects, particularly Maths, English and Science.
These improvements are no accident, but the result of more focus on the academic basics, which has been reflected by more time spent on them in schools.
DFE publish data on how much time is spent on different subjects in England’s schools. The chart below shows how schools’ time use has changed since 2011 for years 10 and 11 - the GCSE years.
Now here’s the same thing for years 7 to 9 (the first three years of secondary). NB things like “biology” are a subset of “All sciences”)
These charts shows us that:
There’s been more time devoted to English, Maths and the sciences1.
There’s been more time on history and geography too.
There’s been less time on PE at GCSE - but not lower down in school.
Languages have held their own.
The changes in other smaller subjects are less big than people sometimes imply. At GCSE Art and drama have come down a little, but music has stayed pretty similar. Earlier on in school Art and Music have stayed the same, and drama is up.
Things that have moved the most are Design and Technology and “ICT”.
The ICT one needs unpacking. You can see that “computer science” has actually gone up even as “ICT” has gone down. What’s going on?
Targetology?
The change to ICT is a good example of how changes in performance metrics can lead to real world effects. The most extreme example was the “European Computer Driving Licence” qualification, which was was used to game league tables, because it scored highly and students typically got a much better grade on it than the other things they studied. It also counted towards the “five GCSE passes” metric, leading to a 2,000% increase in the number studying it in one year. Ministers then took it out of the performance metric and, as if by magic, schools suddenly lost all interest in it.
More broadly I am not too worried by the shift on generic “ICT” (a.k.a. how to use a computer). Young people are generally better digital natives than their teachers: our lessons at school were excruciating. If we want to add real value in schools it is in proper computer science.
Still, that episode shows us how performance metrics can drive school behaviour, so need handling with care.
But we shouldn’t get hung up on thinking that’s performance measures are the only thing that’s driven more focus on the academic core. In fact this greater focus has been driven by multiple factors.
It is partly a result of school choice, and greater focus among parents and schools on academic achievement over recent decades. It is partly about teacher recruitment: Design and Technology is a long-running shortage subject, something the government are about to make worse with the QTS changes in the Schools Bill.
These changes in our schools also reflect international trends. There has been a global shift towards STEM subjects and a little away from the humanities: schools and young people can see which way the wind is blowing. According to the OECD this is happening across the developed world:
(…) Between 2015 and 2018, the share of bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees awarded in humanities fields fell 5%, 11%, and 9% respectively on average with drops of varying proportions detected in 24 of the 36 OECD countries.
But, while they are only one factor, schools are responsive to the accountability measures on which they are assessed: things like the Ebacc or later the Attainment 8 and Progress 8 measures.
A lot of people are predicting the government will change these following the review.
If they do, they need to be very careful.
The current lead metrics - Progress 8 and Attainment 8 - are the result of decades of trial and error.
For example, Progress 8 is the successor to “Contextual Value Added” - an over-complex page-long algorithm which spat out unintelligible (mainly junk) numbers and baked in low expectations for some ethnic minorities
Another example: Attainment 8 is the successor to crude measures of GCSE passes in English and Maths which led to an obsessive focus on the “C/D boundary” at the expense of pupils who were not on that boundary2.
In contrast, the current metrics are hard to “game” and generally point schools’ efforts in the right direction. Make things looser, and the scope for unintended consequences and gaming will increase.
Lessons from Scotland
About 20 years ago Scotland overhauled its curriculum, introducing the “Curriculum for Excellence”. The results have been a disaster.
The curriculum was heavily influenced by the modish idea of “skills-based” rather than “knowledge-based” learning. But even the architects of the reform have come to rue this change. As one noted:
“The problem is we did not make sufficiently clear that skills are the accumulation of knowledge. Without knowledge there can be no skills.”
Bingo. The Scottish curriculum also caused a lot of problems with its vaguely defined “experiences and outcomes”, which have leading to confusion. There has been a lot of criticism, including from the OECD, which complained that that “the role of knowledge appears somewhat fragmented and left to interpretation at the school level”.
As a result of this disaster, the debate in Scotland is shifting back in the opposite direction, with teachers and think tanks arguing that Scotland should move towards the kind of “knowledge rich” curriculum put in place in England via 2011 reforms. Even the Scottish government’s own agency, Education Scotland, is talking about bringing back more focus on knowledge.
Sadly, real world failure doesn’t always kill bad ideas in education, and Wales is about to replicate a lot of Scotland’s moves in its curriculum overhaul. (The Welsh government has a bad track record of pushing totally discredited methods that were trendy 30 years ago.)
And there are even people who want the same thing in England. The terms of reference written by ministers for the English curriculum review breathlessly talks about “embedding digital, oracy and life skills in their learning,” and, “A curriculum that reflects the issues and diversities of our society, ensuring all children and young people are represented”. Hopefully the bitter lessons from Scotland and Wales will be learned.
Conclusions
At present at least, we have school choice. If parents want a school that focuses more on art, music and drama rather than a highly academic school like, say, Michaela, then they can choose that. But parents generally value the 3Rs pretty highly.
If ministers want to push all schools in a less academically-focussed direction they should be clear about the trade-offs this will mean, and exactly what will be cut to make room.
Accountability measures can affect school behaviour, and history shows that massive care is needed in changing them to avoid unintended consequences.
Accountability measures are not the only thing that has driven schools in England to spend more time on the core academic subjects. Global trends and parental choice have been pushing in the same direction, and in many ways this is a positive trend for our future.
I think the rebound of proper double or triple science is one of the best things that has happened in schools. Having fallen from 83% to 70% between 2006 and 2011, the share taking double or triple science is now up to 98%. The share doing triple science rocketed from just 6% of pupils in 2006, compared to 27% in 2019.
Even in the context of a lot of grade inflation at that time, the share gaining an A*, A or B grade during the noughties barely changed - the floor target led to the neglect of potential high-performers. In the noughties it was all about flipping Ds to Cs:
