Curriculum and Assessment Review

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

The Government are committed to ensuring that a person’s background does not determine what they can go on to achieve. To take one example from the review, it is clear that on leaving primary school, too many young people do not have the reading and writing skills that they need to succeed later in life, and the attainment gap sadly widens throughout their secondary school careers. We will take action by providing more support around reading, including through a statutory test in year 8, so that schools better identify and target support at the students who have the most to gain. That will extend to many disadvantaged children in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I welcome the broadening of the curriculum, which will allow more children to find joy in learning, particularly children with special educational needs, who really need the benefit of creative skills. As a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for performing arts education and training, and as the mother of a musical theatre undergraduate, I am concerned about the cuts announced just last month to teacher training bursaries in the creative arts. Will the Secretary of State confirm that they will be reversed, so that we have enough creative teachers?

[Bridget Phillipson]

We have to target our bursaries and financial support at the areas and subjects where they are most needed, and that is what we have sought to do through the bursaries and financial support that we have put in place. However, I welcome the hon. Member’s support for arts and creative education. The review and the Government’s response to it have been widely welcomed by the creative sector.