Nearly a decade on from the last major reforms, politicians are again turning their attention to the national curriculum. This briefing assesses claims that the curriculum is ‘too packed with content’, and sets out how curriculum and assessment reform can improve secondary level education in England.
KEY POINTS
- There is an excessive amount of content in the national curriculum, leading to rote learning and teachers skipping through content too quickly.
- This issue isn’t caused by the curriculum, but is due to the GCSE assessment regime.
- A large amount of time is spent preparing for exams rather than learning new concepts and gaining a deep understanding of subjects.
- The importance of GCSEs for schools leads them to maximise exam results rather than meaningfully developing student’s comprehension.
- There is scope to slim down the curriculum, but this will have minimal effect without significantly reducing the extent and importance of assessment at 16.
- The process by which curriculum reforms are carried out is critical. Effective reform needs to be expert-led, impartial and carried out on a predetermined cyclical basis.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- Reforms should seek a modest, not drastic, reduction in the level of curriculum content, prioritising subjects like History where there is greatest dissatisfaction.
- GCSEs should be slimmed down.
- They should involve less assessment, and alternative approaches such as online assessments should be explored.
- The stakes of GCSEs for schools should be reduced, for example by using annual testing of randomly selected students to measure performance, and using Ofsted as a counterbalance to incentives for rote learning.
- Implementation of reform matters as much as what it involves
- Changes should be expert-led, with the creation of an independent curriculum review group, with its terms of reference set by the government.
- A citizens’ assembly, which tries to find consensus on contentious political questions like what history young people need to know, could set fundamental long-term goals for this review group.
- Reforms should be carried out on a cyclical periodic basis, divorcing them from the political cycle – reviewing curriculum every ten years would bring England in line with Finland and Japan.
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