National Curriculum

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, with the permission of the Grand Committee I will speak seated today. To cover the national curriculum in under five minutes is an impossibility so I will focus ruthlessly on maths and English, particularly at key stage 4. I remember the launch of the national curriculum. I was a parent, chair of governors of a primary school and a councillor. It seemed like a good idea: a national framework that would help deliver consistent standards and syllabuses. At least initially, it was not too constraining on teachers at the point of delivery, but all that changed very rapidly. Suddenly, reams of papers with strictures, limitations and specified methods of teaching started to arrive.

As I held the education portfolio on Cambridgeshire County Council at the time, I had the pleasure of hosting a French primary education team who came to look at our pre-national curriculum model in some of our excellent primary schools. They were impressed and said: “At least your schools have the freedom to teach what they want. In France, if it is the second Tuesday in March, you know that a 10 year-old will be on chapter 2 of the green textbook”. I fear that in the succeeding decade England has moved too much in the French direction.

The French also liked our philosophy of developing children as thinkers and independent learners. Now, a decade on, too many children are taught to the test, whether or not they have learnt the foundations beneath it. A university lecturer friend told me last week that she despairs of students who come to her and ask what they need to learn to pass. “I just want you to learn to think,” she replies.

The national curriculum should be a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage dictating every detail of what our children must learn. We should focus on pupil and student attainment and give the thousands of excellent teachers the flexibility to deliver it in the professional way that they know best. A minimum curriculum must ensure that our pupils can read and write, are numerate and have the appropriate ICT skills. Without these, they will find it almost impossible to gain meaningful employment in our knowledge-based economy. It has to be true, underlying knowledge as well, not just learnt for an exam.

I talked on Saturday to an employer recruiting graduates in the financial services sector. They had whittled down more than 160 applications to 14 that they could even contemplate shortlisting, on the basis of literacy and presentation in CVs. One candidate, a graduate with a very good degree, had written the paragraph on why they were suitable entirely in capital letters and with no punctuation. Others did not even get that far, leaving this vital personalising paragraph empty. It is no wonder that employers say that our education system is not equipping enough students with the right skills for a working life in the 21st century. Both the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, quoted the statistics for those who have failed to achieve the standard. My concern is that the examples I have just given would have been deemed to have met the standard.

We need a minimum curriculum to ensure that young people get those skills, and we need to broaden the offer at 16 to 19 to make it the norm for all students to achieve a level 3 in both English and maths. This might be applied English or applied maths, as are relevant for their future studies. My son, for example, did statistics in the lower sixth form to go alongside psychology, which he then read at university; that was extremely helpful to him. There could be written English for engineers and scientists, focusing on the sort of reports that they will have to learn to write later on.

The many strengths of the A-level system in depth unfortunately mean that too many students give up maths of English at 16—far too early. We are one of the few OECD countries to allow this. Even Scotland, with its excellent Highers, keeps that breadth of English and maths at 16. For some schools, the international baccalaureate does the same but I am not convinced that the EBacc at 16 to 18 will do it, because of the lack of compulsion.

The proposed key stage 4 curriculums in English and maths are challenging; taught well, they will give students an excellent foundation for later learning, whether in vocational or academic environments. They look surprisingly similar to the American systems, but the difference between our countries is that American students are expected to continue with both. Our system does not, and this explains the low take-up of maths to which the Minister referred in his opening speech. Will the Minister tell us whether the Government intend to broaden the curriculum to ensure that 16 year-olds continue with both maths and English until they leave formal education and training at 18 and/or attain a level 3 qualification in maths and English? Furthermore, will the Minister tell us whether applied maths and English courses will also be approved for those following vocational routes? It is as important for them and questions have certainly been raised about the functional skills courses that have been available in recent times.

Other speakers have rightly focused on the educational elements. The new national curriculum, which should be taught in all maintained schools, has the potential to free teachers from previous constraints, but—and it is a big but—attainment in maths and English is essential to make our young people not just employable but constructive and productive workers who are able to achieve their full potential in the UK.