Curriculum and Assessment Review

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, looking at this debate, what strikes me as the most unloved thing in the Room is the EBacc. The fact that we have an overemphasis on academic standards has squeezed out the fun bits. If I had longer, I would go over many of the speeches, but the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, bringing the condom and the landmine into the same sentence, along with the tampon, is something that I will try, but will probably fail, to drive out of my brain. The main thing to say is that something that makes school entertaining and keeps you engaged has often driven up attainment in academic subjects. PE is established here, and arts and other creative activities also have a similar record. How do you bring this in? I suggest that the Government look again at something that they have done in PE, which has had a degree of success—the school sports partnership.

This is not about an elite-level pathway; this is about participation. It is about somebody taking on something and getting something back from it. There may not be national bodies for things such as the arts, am-dram and music, but people are doing this out there. I would hope that the Government have some interaction with the voluntary sector, where people do something that is fun and adds to their life. I have known dyslexics who will read a document about something that they are interested in and try several times to get it. They put far more effort in than they will do into some random piece of literature, no matter how highly it is esteemed by certain academics. They will engage with it, and people who have something to engage with positively in the school experience will do better. I hope that the Minister, when she comes to answer, will at least say that the Government are looking positively at this, because there is a whole group of people who can feed into the system.

Music would be a real benefit. Somebody once described to me that if you give a violin or a piano to a child to learn the basics on, it is a choice between being shot or hanged for many parents. Why do we not expand this to a guitar or a set of drums? This is possibly a different form of death, but you get the idea—these are things in which people can engage. Look to what talks to you in your own language, or language that is accessible to you, and you have a chance of expanding people’s horizons and upping their academic attainment.