The government commissioned a review of the national curriculum and assessments in England last year, in the hope of developing a “cutting edge” curriculum that would narrow attainment gaps between the most disadvantaged students and their classmates.<\/p>\n
It said it would take up most of the review’s recommendations, including scrapping the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), a progress measure for schools introduced in 2010.<\/p>\n
It assesses schools based on how many pupils take English, maths, sciences, geography or history and a language – and how well they do.<\/p>\n
The Department for Education (DfE) said the EBacc was “constraining”, and that removing it alongside reforms to another school ranking system, Progress 8, would “encourage students to study a greater breadth of GCSE subjects”, like arts.<\/p>\n
The former Conservative schools minister, Nick Gibb, said the decision to scrap the EBacc would “lead to a precipitous decline in the study of foreign languages”, which he said would become increasingly centred on private schools and “children of middle class parents who can afford tutors”.<\/p>\n
Other reforms coming as a result of the curriculum review include:<\/p>\n
Financial literacy being taught in maths classes, or compulsory citizenship lessons in primary schools<\/p>\n
More focus on spotting misinformation and disinformation – including exploring a new post-16 qualification in data science and AI<\/p>\n
Cutting time spent on GCSE exams by up to three hours for each student on average<\/p>\n
Ensuring all children can take three science GCSEs<\/p>\n
More content on climate change<\/p>\n
Better representation of diversity<\/p>\n
The review also recommended giving oracy the same status in the curriculum as reading and writing, which the charity Voice 21 said was a “vital step forward” for teaching children valuable speaking, listening, and communication skills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The government commissioned a review of the national curriculum and assessments in England last year, in the hope…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-244272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}