Education for 11 to 16 Year-olds (Committee Report)

Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts

Friday 26th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I was delighted to be a member of the Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee and am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. I too thank my noble friend Lord Johnson for his excellent chairmanship and the committee staff for their hard work in supporting us.

We say at the start of our report:

“The 11-16 phase of education is a crucial stage in a young person’s life”.


It is essential that it effectively equips them with the skills, knowledge and behaviours they need to progress and make the most of the opportunities that lie before them. Today’s 11 year-olds will leave school in the 2030s and join a labour market that is likely to be transformed from the one we have today, to one with major opportunities and major challenges. As our economy and society develop, it is only right that the education system adapts and changes to reflect our new realities. However, doing that is no easy feat.

Trying to second-guess with any certainty what job opportunities might be available to young people in the coming decades when we are seeing such technological and societal changes now is extremely challenging. But, as we set out in the report, even if we cannot predict future employment requirements, we can say with perhaps more certainty that, in addition to all pupils needing a strong grounding in literacy and numeracy—a non-negotiable in a high-performing education system—the development and nurturing of “human skills” during a young person’s secondary education is likely to be increasingly important for their future success, as technology in particular reshapes employment.

In evidence, we heard that the skills imperative 2035 programme undertaken by the National Foundation for Educational Research identified six essential employment skills that are predicted to be the most utilised in the labour market in 2035: communication; collaboration; problem solving; organising, planning and prioritising work; creative thinking; and information literacy. This view—the need to develop a range of skills during the 11 to 16 phase of education alongside acquiring knowledge—was a clear theme throughout our evidence sessions. Equally clear was the view that they are currently being squeezed out by the demands and structure of the curriculum.

Nevertheless, while we look to the future, it is only fair that we recognise that education reforms introduced by previous Conservative Governments have successfully improved standards and were designed to address the concern at the time that the previous qualifications did not adequately prepare young people for the demands of the workplace or higher study. They have had success. But, with the last full-scale review of the curriculum being over a decade ago, it is timely to consider what and whether changes are now needed.

The evidence we heard suggested that what and how pupils learn in the 11 to 16 phase needs to be reconsidered. Access to the internet, the advent of AI and the possibilities these hold for access to information and learning must lead us to examine whether such a strong, continued focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum which necessitates narrow teaching methods at the expense of pupils having the opportunity to develop broader skills—

“collaboration, creative thinking, critical thinking and communication”,

as one of our witnesses described them—continues to be the right approach.

Data from the survey platform Teacher Tapp found that 76% of teachers felt there was too much content to cover in their GCSE classes and that 57% were unable or only just about able to complete teaching their course prior to exam season. At our session with young people—which, as we have heard, impacted quite a lot of us—several participants talked about their teachers being unable to take questions during lessons because there was too much material to get through, which the pupils felt stifled their ability to really engage with their learning and the deeper understanding they were trying to develop.

So in recognising the need to continue to improve outcomes for young people, the committee, as we have heard, made a series of recommendations in relation to the 11 to 16 curriculum in our report aimed at rebalancing it. In particular, we recommended that the Government look at reducing the overall content load of the 11 to 16 curriculum, specifically on GCSE subject curricula, to allow pupils greater opportunities to develop and apply the essential skills they need to thrive in the future, and to give teachers greater flexibility to foster curiosity and deeper understanding of learning in the classroom.

Indeed, as we say in the report:

“A revised curriculum should enable schools to offer a more varied range of learning experiences, with the aim of promoting the development of a broader set of knowledge, skills and behaviours”.


Mindful of the disruption that wholesale change can cause—a concern raised by a number of those who gave evidence to the committee—we proposed that the Government should undertake a review to establish how this can be achieved and publish its findings. As we set out clearly in the report, supporting pupils to achieve a basic standard of literacy and numeracy must remain a core purpose of the 11 to 16 system.

We therefore also recommended that high-quality level-2 literacy and numeracy qualifications focus on the application of essential skills and that genuinely different and distinct qualifications from the discipline-based English and maths GCSEs qualifications be developed. Again, we proposed that the Government consult on whether the existing English and maths functional skills qualifications could fulfil that purpose or whether the development of new qualifications was needed.

In light of the recommendations, I—like all noble Lords, I think, who have spoken so far and who I suspect will speak in the debate—welcome the curriculum and assessment review announced last week by the Government and the opportunity it offers for an informed evidence-based debate on what a curriculum that delivers a high standard of education and equips young people with the skills and breadth of knowledge they need to flourish might look like over the coming decades. I hope this will be a genuinely open exercise based, as we say, on evidence and not preconceived ideas, one that recognises the achievements that have been made in our education system over the last decade and builds on them but which also unashamedly looks to the future to ensure that our education system continues to give young people the best start in life.

I hope that the Minister in her closing remarks will be able to provide more details about the review. Building on the comments of my noble friend Lord Baker, it will be critical that cross-party support comes behind a review in order that any recommendations are effectively implemented. Again, I would be very interested to hear whether the Minister could say anything about how there will be a real attempt to build consensus around this. It is such an important issue and will have such an impact on the young people of tomorrow.