Education: English Baccalaureate

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 5th May 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they are making of the impact of the new English baccalaureate on the breadth of subjects offered by schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, anecdotal evidence suggests that the English baccalaureate is already having an effect in terms of opening up opportunities for pupils to take qualifications in key academic subjects. We will continue to monitor teaching, as we do at present, through the school workforce census, which will collect information annually on the subjects being taught by all teachers in maintained secondary schools. We will also be examining trends in GCSE entries.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Can he explain the process by which the core subjects in the English baccalaureate were put together at the expense, as some see it, of other equally merited academic subjects? Is he aware that schools are now putting pressure on pupils to focus on those English baccalaureate subjects regardless of their aptitude, so that the school will perform well in the new league tables? If he agrees that pupils should not be shoe-horned into those narrow curriculum choices, what is the department doing to ensure that they are given a broad range of curriculum options and can flourish and excel at subjects they enjoy?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with the point that children should not be shoe-horned into choices that are not appropriate for them. I think that everyone would accept that children are different, that there is no right way for any particular children and that vocational options as well as academic options should be fully available. It would be wrong if schools were forcing children to do things that were not right for them or were forcing them to change subjects halfway through their course. The point of the English baccalaureate is to try to make sure that a number of key academic subjects are available to as many children as possible. If one starts at the point that what one wants to do is to get children from all backgrounds, particularly from poor backgrounds, to get to university, and to keep those options open to them, the subjects in the English baccalaureate are the kinds of subjects that will help those children to progress to A-level and from A-level to university. The correlation between the subjects that the Russell group has said that it would look for and the subjects in the English baccalaureate is very close.