Recommendation 35

HM Government Acknowledged

Every state-funded school must offer a broad and balanced curriculum which promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils, and prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. The Government wants pupils to leave school prepared, in the widest sense, for adult life and the acquisition of knowledge is the basic building block of education to which all pupils should have fair access. Central to raising standards has been ensuring that all children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, have access to the ‘best that has been thought and said’, as part of their cultural inheritance. This has meant overhauling the so- called skills- or competence-based national curriculum, replacing it with one that makes sure children are taught the essential building blocks of knowledge, providing them with the understanding they need to participate fully in society. The national curriculum reforms focused on restoring knowledge to the heart of the curriculum. Pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit from a knowledge-rich approach for two main reasons. Firstly, securing domain-specific knowledge is essential to learning. Pupils start school with differing levels of knowledge depending on their background, meaning those with greater levels of prior knowledge learn more easily than those with limited prior knowledge, and therefore the gap between these two groups widens. Secondly, pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to access ‘communal knowledge’ or the ‘cultural commons of the nation’ at home. It is, therefore, important that schools make sure that all pupils have access to this through the delivery of an effectively sequenced knowledge-rich curriculum. The EBacc (English Baccalaureate) subject pillars are English, maths, history or geography, the sciences and a language. This covers seven GCSEs if pupils take combined science, and eight GCSEs if they take triple science. To achieve the EBacc pupils must get a grade 9 to 4 (A* to C equivalent) in each pillar. The proportion of all pupils in state-funded schools that entered the EBacc rose from 21.8% in 2010 to 40.0% in 2019; those that achieved it rose from 15.1% to 24.9% in the same period. The Government’s ambition is to make progress towards 90% of year 10 pupils in state-funded mainstream schools studying EBacc GCSEs by September 2025 (examination in 2027). We have five headline measures of secondary school accountability designed to encourage schools to teach a broad and balanced curriculum with a focus on a strong academic core. Two of these measures, Progress 8 and Attainment 8, allow scope for pupils to pursue their personal interests, by counting up to three further “open” subjects, alongside English and maths and three EBacc subjects. These “open” subjects can be GCSE qualifications (including additional EBacc subjects) or Technical Awards from the DfE approved list. Key to giving all children the same chance to succeed through education is ensuring that they can study core academic subjects at GCSE – English, maths, science, history or geography and a language that make up the EBacc. From 2011 to 2020, there was a 19.2 percentage point rise in the proportion of disadvantaged pupils in state-funded mainstream schools entering the EBacc. The equivalent figure for non-disadvantaged pupils during that period is 18.3. Part of the reason why lower socio-economic groups are underrepresented at high status universities, is differences in subject choice at A level. Evidence suggests that these gaps can be closed by reducing differences in attainment and subject choice at GCSE. DfE research from January 2019 shows over 9 in 10 Oxbridge students entered a GCSE in languages which form part of the EBacc, with more than 75% entering both languages and humanities. These pupils studied a broad and balanced curriculum before going on to highly selective universities. A study by the UCL Institute of Education shows that studying subjects included in the EBacc provides pupils with greater opportunities in further education and increases the likelihood that a pupil will stay on in full-time education. Sutton Trust research from 2016 suggested that 300 schools which had increased EBacc take-up were more likely to achieve good GCSEs in mathematics and English, with Pupil Premium pupils benefitting the most. The Government believes it is important to ensure that young people have the knowledge they need to succeed. We reformed GCSEs as a response to concerns being raised by employers and higher and further education institutions that GCSEs did not adequately prepare young people for the demands of the workplace and higher study. The reformed GCSEs rigorously assess the knowledge acquired by pupils during Key Stage 4 and are in line with expected standards in countries with high- performing education systems. We created more linear exams, ending modularisation, so that less time would