‘Slim down GCSEs to reduce curriculum overload’, think tank says

With the Labour Party having committed to a full-fledged curriculum and assessment review, the Social Market Foundation (SMF) – a cross-party think tank – set out to examine how to avoid expanding what is already widely regarded as a bloated curriculum. Politicians and teachers alike have criticised the existing curriculum for being ‘too full’ and encouraging ‘rote learning’, yet any review is likely to involve further pressure to add new topics, such as financial education and mental health.

The SMF argue that there is scope to make space in the curriculum by targeted reductions in content in specific subjects – for example, 55% of History teachers would like the curriculum to be ‘significantly’ pared back, compared to just 17% of Maths teachers. However, education experts said that such efforts would be futile without addressing the amount of time school students spend preparing for GCSEs, largely on rote learning. One interviewee said that “the more we assess, the less we teach… if you didn’t have assessment…you’d have more time for actual learning rather than revision”.

Consequently, the SMF is calling for reduced emphasis on major examination at 16, which could be replaced with more regular and ‘lower-stakes’ testing. Such reform – far more than removing content from the curriculum – would significantly improve the overloaded curriculum, and improve teaching efficacy, the SMF said.

The UK is currently the only country in the developed world that has so many high-stakes tests at both 16 and 18.

The SMF notes for schools to deprioritise GCSEs in their timetabling, they would have to be evaluated on other measures of school accountability. Apart from Ofsted inspections, ‘Attainment 8’ and ‘Progress 8’ (the latter was introduced in 2016) have become the main tools for judging schools, and since both these measures focus on school students’ GCSE exam predicted and actual grades, they incentivise single minded focus on end-of-stage examinations.

That said, the SMF notes that reforms to the curriculum and assessment have to be carried out carefully, so as to win legitimacy and avoid being politicised. The SMF recommends that:

• 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.

John Asthana Gibson, Researcher at Social Market Foundation, said:
“The importance of GCSEs to schools, and the sheer amount of time dedicated to them, is worsening the quality of education in secondary schools.

Unfortunately, that’s how the system is set up. The importance of exam results to school leaders and teachers encourages them to focus on maximising these results, and this objective often takes precedence over developing students’ genuine comprehension of subjects. The inordinate amount of content students have to revise for, typically across nine or ten subjects, only serves to compound this problem, exacerbating the pressures teachers face to deliver rote learning in classrooms.

But there are ways to rectify this problem. Doing so involves slimming down GCSEs, both in terms of the content assessed and importance to schools. This will reduce the amount of time and energy going to the wrong places and redirect it to facilitate productive teaching. It should be the focus of any future curriculum and assessment reform.”

Notes

1. The SMF briefing, Testing patience, is published at https://www.smf.co.uk/publications/school-curriculum-reform/ on 7^th May, 2024.

Contact

• For media enquiries, please contact Impact Officer Richa Kapoor, at richa@smf.co.uk

ENDS