Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of their plans to make all schools convert to academy status, what will be the status of the National Curriculum after those conversions.

In 2014, we introduced a new, more ambitious national curriculum which was developed to reflect the views of subject experts and teachers and the findings of international best practice comparisons.

An academised system means that the national curriculum will become a benchmark. It will serve an important role in setting out the level of knowledge-based, ambitious, academically rigorous education which every child should experience.

If autonomous academies or multi-academy trusts (MATs) wish to deliver the national curriculum in their schools, they can do so confidently. We want academies to use their freedom to innovate and build more stretching curricula to meet the needs of their pupils or their local area or the particular ethos of the school.