Education for 11 to 16 Year-olds (Committee Report)

We received the Government’s response to our report in February and it was disappointing, to say the least. There has of course been a change of government since, as I mentioned, and I hope that we will see greater appetite from the new team to drive forward the change needed. Responding to our recommendations, the previous Government stated that they did not consider GCSE subject content

“to be excessive or in need of fundamental review”.

They argued that the academic standards expected under the current arrangements were “in line with” those of

“countries with high-performing education systems”.

Supporting all pupils to achieve the highest standards they can is a crucial aim and England’s improved positions in the latest PISA rankings is to be welcomed, yet our young people must also be offered the chance to experience more practical, applied forms of learning. Witnesses argued that the current overcrowded curriculum provides few opportunities for this. Our talent pipeline also depends on secondary pupils being supported and inspired to pursue the full range of options in the next phase of their education, including technical qualifications and apprenticeships. Enabling our young people to begin to explore creative and technical learning in this phase is therefore vital. Yet we heard that there has been a dramatic decline in the number of pupils taking design and technology at GCSE, the main technical qualification at key stage 4.

Last week the Government launched a review of both the curriculum and assessment. This is much needed, and I particularly welcome the Government’s ambition to ensure that

“every young person gets the opportunity to develop creative, digital, and speaking and listening skills”.

As the Government note, these are “particularly prized by employers”.

On accountability, I hope that the upcoming review will take note of the committee’s finding that the current system is overfocused on academic pathways. A key driver of this, of course, is the English baccalaureate, or EBacc. The EBacc comprises a set of traditionally academic GCSE subjects defined by the Department for Education. It is not in itself, however, a qualification for pupils; rather, it is a performance measure through which schools are held to account. The Government have set an ambition that 90% of 14 to 16 year-olds in state-funded schools should be studying the EBacc subjects by 2025. We heard compelling evidence that this has led to a deprioritisation of creative, artistic and technical subjects, particularly when school budgets are stretched, as they are. According to GCSE entry data, take-up of music has fallen by 35% and of drama by 40% since the introduction of the EBacc in 2010.

The EBacc’s composition is based on the facilitating subjects—a now-retracted classification formerly put forward by the Russell group. It is therefore geared to the requirements of high-tariff university entrance. Yet around three in five 18 year-olds in the United Kingdom do not go to university. One head teacher described the narrow diet of academic study promoted by the EBacc as “a deadly experience” for those who would be better suited to a different combination of subjects. The committee therefore urged the Government to abandon the EBacc immediately. We argued that the remaining 11 to 16 school performance measures should then be reviewed. They must give schools more flexibility to offer the qualifications that would best serve their pupils, including creative, technical and vocational subjects, and not give undue emphasis to the university route. Responding to the report, the Government simply told us:

“We have no plans to abandon or amend the EBacc or our ambition for high levels of take-up”.

The Labour Party has, however, previously suggested that the key stage 4 school performance metrics should be adapted to recognise

“the value of creativity in young people’s education”

and to promote the take-up of creative and vocational subjects. I would be grateful if the Minister could expand on this proposal and set out how these changes might be implemented.

Finally, I turn to assessment. We heard that many pupils in this phase undergo more than 30 hours of assessment during GCSE exam season. This follows a shift away from the use of coursework or other forms of non-exam assessment in recent years. Our report determined that there is a need for some kind of formal assessment at 16, given the number of pupils who change institutions when they progress to the next phase of their education. We also noted credible concerns that non-exam assessment can lead to less reliable grades. The committee concluded, however, that the current emphasis on end-of-course exam-based testing places a “disproportionate” burden on pupils.

Intense exam pressure is also experienced by teachers and schools, since GCSE results underpin the majority of school performance measures for the 11 to 16 phase. We therefore supported proposals from the Times Education Commission and others to move towards a slimmed-down form of assessment at 16, with externally validated testing used across a smaller set of subjects.

On assessment reform, the previous Government restated their position that linear exam-based testing is

“the best and fairest way to ensure children learn and retain knowledge”.

The new Government have committed to

“consider the right balance of assessment methods whilst protecting the important role of examinations”

as part of their expert-led review. Could the Minister confirm that this review will take account of the many recent reports that have called for a less onerous model of assessment at 16? Given that all young people in England must now remain in education or training until the age of the 18, the case for change seems clear.

To conclude, the committee received overwhelming evidence that the current 11 to 16 system is failing to provide a genuinely broad and balanced education and to adequately prepare the next generation. I strongly encourage the new Government to carefully consider our recommendations and take swift action to bring about the changes needed. I beg to move.

“entries in arts subjects has declined by 47%”.

We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, about the individual subjects, but across the piece it has declined by 47% since 2010. This is not, I believe, where we would all agree that we should be. One of the speakers at the launch was the mother of the remarkable Kanneh-Mason children. Their talent and enthusiasm for music was nurtured and developed in a state school in Nottingham. Dr Kanneh expressed regret that future cohorts of children at that school would no longer enjoy such provision, due to budget cuts arising from both curriculum constraints and, of course, insufficient funding. Such cuts have been faced in all too many schools.

Curriculum breadth is important but so too is the vision and mission that all children and young people will leave school ready for life—of which work is a part—with the skills, attributes, behaviours and knowledge to thrive as emerging adults. There was much discussion in the committee of digital skills, which are clearly now essential, but also of team working, problem solving, and critical and creative thinking. These are all important and prized by employers—not to mention oracy, about which I received an interesting and useful briefing from an aptly named organisation, Voice 21.

I turn to a particular constraint on the curriculum, about which noble Lords have already heard: the so-called EBacc. The report rightly called for this to be abandoned; it should be. I recently read a book by Sam Freedman, a former advisor to Michael Gove. Noble Lords may know that, in my previous job at the National Union of Teachers, I rarely agreed with that particular former Secretary of State or his advisers, but I have learned something really important from Sam Freedman’s book, which I hope will increase the likelihood of the end of the EBacc. Mr Freedman, in writing about the comms grid, which he calls “the beast”, said:

“As an adviser in the Department for Education I had to feed the beast. Every September a ‘Back to School’ week appeared on the Grid, which meant three or four big policy announcements were required. In 2010 we hadn’t yet finished developing our policy plans so had to scrabble around for ideas. Over the past several months we had been considering an idea to reward pupils who did a particular mix of more traditional subjects at GCSE. But no proper work had been done by the department and we had not talked to any headteachers about it yet. However, the minister, Michael Gove, was due to go on the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme that Sunday and he needed something to say, so we decided it was the best idea we had. At the time the department was leaking a lot so the announcement was worked up by a tiny team of ministers, advisers and one or two trusted officials. There was no consultation and it was done in two days. That Sunday, Gove announced a new ‘English Baccalaureate’ to Marr (He called it that because it sounded European and The Guardian would like it.) In the years since the announcement, that policy has had an enormous impact on schools.”

Mr Freedman goes on to say that he did not think it was wholly bad but observes that it has had a distinctly deleterious effect on arts subjects.

Let me move on to the fact that the EBacc subjects appear in buckets—a rather inelegant way to express subject groupings. This clearly makes some combinations completely impossible. These buckets, and the overburdensome content of the subject syllabus at GCSE, put me in mind of the WB Yeats quote:

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”.

I venture to suggest that not many of WB Yeats’s metaphorical fires are currently lit—or indeed that much fun is being had, as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, often reminded the committee. Surely that should be the experience of education that we want for young people. Going forward, we will achieve this only if the curriculum and assessment review is bold and radical. We need to turn our attention—as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said in this Chamber only last week—to the model of curriculum that we want. This is not a time for tinkering with buckets.

I add, as I am sure my noble friend Lord Watson would have done if he had been here, that as Ofqual recognises that GCSE results are accurate only to within one grade, serious questions should be asked about their value. Assessment needs to be considered in the round. There are many more options than the near-total reliance on terminal exams. Presentational skills in writing and speaking can play a key role going forward in how we capture the learning and strengths of all our young people. There is ample experience in the education sector, including in universities, as well as in schools offering other types of qualifications such as the EPQ, of alternatives. We also need to consider the hitherto malign influence of Ofsted, and look to better and more professionally appropriate ways to evaluate the work of schools. The Beyond Ofsted inquiry, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, has much to offer on this.

I repeat that it was a pleasure to be a member of this committee. I am particularly pleased to have worked alongside the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, who now regards me, he said last week, as a “good egg”, and I certainly returned the compliment. I commend this report to the Government and urge boldness. However, in thinking about change, even urgent change, we need to have regard to the investment required in teachers’ necessary professional development, the resources needed, and the need to ensure that the curriculum and assessment will be appropriate for all our young people. Our new Government have talked about a curriculum that reflects the issues and diversity in society, ensuring that all young people feel represented, are able to access it and can be successful. Surely that is the appropriate aspiration for our education system.

Even more concerning is the ever-growing gap between state and private schools in providing creative and cultural education, including in music, art, theatre, dance and, particular, design and technology, resulting largely from the omission of these subjects from the EBacc performance measure. So I hope that the Minister, whom I welcome to her post, will have something to say about restoring arts and creative subjects to their proper place in all schools.

For the 60%-plus of students who do not aspire to university but are more concerned about acquiring the knowledge and skills to enable them to discover and develop the talents and attributes that will enable them to fulfil their potential in the world of work, the picture is less rosy. For the 30% or so who fail to attain level 4 passes in GCSE English and maths—the so-called forgotten third—the prospects are even worse, as they find themselves branded failures. Even in their own eyes, they may see themselves as failures, and they are condemned to a sometimes recurring round of resits in order to make any further progress.

There are other ways of achieving functional proficiency in English and maths than through GCSEs, and I hope the Minister will assure us that this is one of our recommendations that the Government will pursue. I am encouraged by this statement in the manifesto that

“Labour will support children to study a creative or vocational subject until they are 16”.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister how all pupils will be enabled to study at least one technical or vocational subject.

Assessment for 11 to 16 year-olds rests mainly on GCSEs. These are claimed to have the advantage of being fair, since all children take the same exams at the same time and are marked in the same way by external assessors. The flaw in this idea is that not all children are the same. We received a mass of evidence that GCSEs are too content-heavy, too demanding—with up to 30 exams in a concentrated period—too stressful and too rigid. Teachers told us of having to “teach to the test” and being unable to explore issues that had sparked pupils’ interest and desire to learn more about them because of the need to get through the GCSE curriculum. Students told us of throwing away their textbooks after completing their GCSEs, because they knew they would never again need the information contained in them.

Schools may be good at preparing pupils for university, but they are much less good at preparing them for life or for work. Regular promises over many years to improve parity of esteem between academic and technical education have never succeeded. Yet the university technical colleges pioneered by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking—I am sure he will tell us more about them in a moment—have shown clearly how such a balance can be successfully achieved. We visited a very impressive UTC in east London. Not all schools can be UTCs, so the idea of a UTC sleeve, enabling existing secondary schools to extend their offerings to include technical learning, is hugely attractive, and I hope the Government will commit to piloting it with a wider rollout in mind. Other schools, mainly in the private sector, such as Bedales and Latymer Upper, have decided to abandon GCSEs altogether except for English and maths, and to develop their own curriculum offers and assessment methodologies. There is something to learn from that.

Skills-based and technical subjects are often seen as harder to assess than academic subjects. Our report emphasises the need for appropriate forms of non-exam assessment to meet this need. There are many options, including performance-based assessment in music or sport, for example. Other options include presentations, coursework, project outcomes—as part of the higher project qualification, for example—on-screen assessment, and the universal framework for assessing essential life skills, which was developed by the Skills Builder Partnership and is already used in almost 600 schools and colleges. All these forms of assessment are much closer to what students are likely to encounter in their working lives than our exams.

I will move on and not talk about accountability, because that was covered extremely well by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson. I very much look forward to the Minister’s response to this debate and trust that it will confirm the Government’s intention to act on rather more of the committee’s recommendations than their predecessor planned to do. Reforming the education system for 11 to 16 year-olds along the lines we advocate, although urgent, is no small task, so an evolutionary approach over a period possibly as long as 10 years will be needed, with an emphasis on getting students, teachers and parents on side.

The Government should set out a clear vision of how they seek to transform education, and a road map for getting there over the coming years. Perhaps they might launch a national campaign to raise the profile and status of education and teaching as a central element of their drive for growth, and again—as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, might have said if she were here—to make education fun and exciting again.

There are many other issues relating to education for 11 to 16 year-olds, and of course to education and skills before and after that age bracket. I wish the Government well in pursuing the change that is so urgently needed and hope there will be many opportunities for this House to provide comment and scrutiny along the way.

The diocese of Chichester that I serve is not unusual in running 155 schools, of which eight are secondary, delivering education to 37,000 pupils. This is a serious responsibility and it provides us with a significant window on the concerns and challenges of every community that our schools serve. It also indicates the wider context in which our schools operate. Thousands of volunteers across the country give their time to work with head teachers and teachers to try to distil the best possible balance between curriculum requirements and time spent on other demands that are non-essential academically but essential for the flourishing of certain subjects and activities, such as music, sport, drama and after-school clubs. Sustaining this, together with recruitment for the demanding contribution of volunteers in good governance, is a constant challenge and it will be very good to hear encouragement of this contribution.

I also note that the terms of reference for the review group speak of

“a curriculum that reflects the issues and diversities of our society”.

Here again, I ask the Minister what attention is to be paid to religious literacy as an important strand of education for understanding the complexity of national and global society. The Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools, or SIAMS, framework promotes religious education as a means to develop “courageous advocacy”, asking how a school’s theologically rooted Christian vision creates an active culture of justice and responsibility.

In a recent article on religious literacy, Professor Jim Walters at the LSE observed that

“learning about religion has become fused with agendas to foster inclusion … This makes it uncomfortable to touch on a tradition’s shadow side or the destructive ways religion is used”.

Walters goes on to assess how education might deepen and widen the outreach of students as a way of preparing them for adult decision-making. He contrasts economic, social and eco systems that are at risk of collapse with a religious imagination that is more than a creed or a set of dogmas. We might legitimately see the absence of any such orientation as one reason for the well-documented decline in happiness and positivity among students today. So I urge that the review group take seriously the important contribution of religious education to addressing issues of diversity and encouraging a critical and imaginative exploration that can expand our vision of a flourishing and coherent future.

Alongside this, I welcome the importance that the report gives to music, art, sport and drama. Investment in this area of education as integral to the curriculum is essential and has been lacking. This makes financial sense as we review the importance of the creative industries for our economy and as a significant source of soft power internationally.

On music as an integrative aspect of a curriculum, the Church of England is very aware in its work, particularly in the diocese of Coventry through its Inspire Education Trust, of how music in schools in areas of acute deprivation, incorporated as a necessary part of the curriculum, has lifted self-esteem and led people into exploration of performance and experience of live music, bringing groups to London to expand that. This is entirely positive.

In the diocese of Chichester, we have also benefited from partnership between church state schools and the independent sector, where music and the arts have been so well funded. At their best, these partnerships have ensured learning opportunities for both sides. The considerable investment in music and the arts from the independent sector has resulted in a notable range of successful actors from that background. One of our leading independent schools, Brighton College, intentionally uses the arts to break down stereotypes of gender and sexual orientation. For example, a key rugby player can also be the lead in a dance troupe. As we face an unprecedented surge in male violence against women, these performative processes of education that tackle emotional insecurities and unexamined prejudice should find an important place in any school curriculum.

I welcome the reference to a curriculum that prepares all children and young people for life as well as for work. It is essential that the formative development in the primary school years is also referenced in the curriculum that builds on that foundation. The resourcing of that early stage will legitimately demand attention and adequate resourcing. For example, the effects of digitalisation and the implementation of technology for the rolling out of the curriculum are heavily dependent on local budget availability, and many children miss out. It is also true that keeping people safe online is now a key priority for the governance of schools, and that includes basic searching for knowledge. I hope this will feature in the review ahead.

Finally, the curriculum review must also recognise that a “whole child” approach confronts us with a significant barrier to the effectiveness of any curriculum: namely, child poverty. The schools I serve identify the two-child cap as a significant contributor to this priority. I hope that its damage to education will contribute to its abolition.

I welcome the attention that His Majesty’s Government intend to bring to the review of the existing national curriculum and statutory assessment system. I hope that the churches will be invited to participate fully in the work of the review group.

If you think about what we aspire for in our economy, where the jobs come from and what sort of adults—the rounded individuals—we want our children to be, that approach does not prepare them for employment, fulfilment or civic life. You can see the consequences of that, as has already been mentioned, in the reduction in emphasis on the other subjects. Music is 35% down, drama is 40% down, expressive arts is 49% down, while design and technology is down by 70% and is now taken by just 12% of pupils. When that happens, you do not get the next generation of teachers coming through either; we have seen that in modern foreign languages. So it is not just about the gap at the moment—we are sowing the seeds for the gaps for the next generation as well.

All that means that the case for change is exceptionally strong. That is not the vision we want: it is not fit for purpose, and it does not meet the aspirations that we have for our nation or our children. So I very much welcome what the report says about the subjects that are ignored—particularly oracy, given my connection with Voice 21. That is described in the report as

“the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language”.

Why would we not want all our children to be able to learn to do that? Why would that not be part of our aspiration? Why would not that be something that we treasure and do all that we can to make happen?

Noble Lords have already spoken about the need for more creative and artistic subjects and for technical and vocational education—and that is right. There is an important point to be made here. When you go round schools, it is not that you do not see any arts, music, drama, engineering or technical work. It is not that you do not hear children speaking very effectively or articulately—it is that the system does not recognise it, and makes it difficult for that to happen. Yes, we have good musicians, but we do not have enough. Yes, we have people who do drama, but there are not enough teachers and facilities around for them all to do it. For too long, the Government have been allowed to say, “Ah, yes, but there is time outside the English baccalaureate for schools to do all those things that are important as well”. The whole system does not recognise those things, and everybody here knows that that accountability system is very good at driving behaviour. If you look at the subjects and skills that have been squeezed out, it is evidence of the power of the accountability structure.

It is interesting that in a report on the curriculum for 14 to 16 year-olds, as much attention has had to be paid to the accountability structure as to the curriculum itself. The curriculum is what we teach and how we teach, while the accountability structure is something completely different. But the strength of the accountability structure is so great that the committee has had to examine that as well. I am a believer in the accountability system. I believe in testing and reporting the tests, and I believe in inspection and accountability, and I have done ever since I was a teacher and the noble Lord, Lord Baker, introduced it into schools at that time. But, to be honest, it has now become our master rather than our servant, and that is a real problem.

We talk about having an aligned system. Of course, the accountability system has to align with the curriculum; we have to test what we teach, and we have to hold people accountable for what we ask them to do. But really that is now so strong that that alignment is a straitjacket. When you ask people why they are not going beyond the English baccalaureate, or why they are not doing more technical subjects, the answer is always the same—because of the accountability system. When the accountability system rules everything else that goes on, there are questions to be asked, which is why I welcome the changes to the accountability system that the committee has recommended. I think that around half of its recommendations do that.

This is the second Friday when we have had an education debate, and on both days the words “revolution” and “evolution” have been used. We have all said the same thing: it must not be revolutionary, it must be evolutionary—and I would say that as well. But I worry that actually we are using that as an excuse not to make the changes that we do not want to make. That is a real risk. I do not want to use the term “revolutionary”, but my criticism of this report is that it is not bold enough; it is restricted too much by what we have now. Really, being evolutionary rather than revolutionary should not restrict our vision—it should indicate caution in our actions. I think that we are allowing the dichotomy between revolution and evolution to put a straitjacket around our aspirations rather than using it as a guide in the implementation. I would have liked the committee—and after a general election is perhaps a good time—to go beyond that. Even if we implement all these committee recommendations, I still do not think that it is the answer to the question of what we aspire to for our children.

I will mention some things that I would have liked to see in the report—and I would very much welcome it if the new Government said that they would take these things forward. First, on assessment, there is nothing brilliant about end-of-term written exams. They are not the gold standard—there are other ways of allowing children to show what they have achieved, with pride and with an objective to do even better. Ofsted is not the only way in which to hold schools to account. The Government could do no better than to implement the report Beyond Ofsted by the inquiry chaired by my noble friend Lord Knight, which suggests an exceptionally strong, robust and fair way in which to hold schools to account.

The third area where I would have liked to see the committee’s report being bolder was to have the starting point have a wider appreciation of what we want for our children and young adults in this stage of their lives. What do we want for their well-being? What do we want for their character? How do we want to help shape their contribution to civic life? What do we want their dreams to be about? How do we equip them to make good partnerships and be friends, colleagues, comrades and work associates with the people they live alongside? How do we help them to be strong individuals and part of strong families and communities and a strong nation? There is no way that the English baccalaureate delivers that—but there is a danger that, while we may implement the recommendations from this report as a first step, the real task of a curriculum and a school system for 11 to 16 year-olds has to be bigger and bolder. Now with a new Government is exactly the time to take on that task.

The other fundamental thing that the Government have done is to set up a review of the curriculum and assessment from 14 to 18 under Professor Becky Francis, who is a very distinguished person and well-known figure in education. That review will be very important. Its object is to re-establish the broad curriculum, which I tried to introduce in the 1980s. It has been whittled away. As a result of the EBacc, design technology—the only practical study—has been reduced by 80%; that is incredible. The cultural subjects—I think the Minister is responsible for culture, or has some interest in culture—have dropped by 50%, including drama, dance, music, art and the performing arts. That industry is burgeoning: the entertainment industry in Britain this year is likely to earn as much as banking. There is huge demand. Eight of the colleges that I promote produce students for the entertainment industry.

One thing that we made a great fuss of in this report was the importance of data skills. In this day and age, students at 18 must all have data skills, not just to be able to use a computer for Instagram and social media but to use all the riches of a computer. In the schools I have been promoting for the past 15 years—university technical colleges—all the students have a computer and are, obviously, well versed in how to use them. What I have found, however, is that everything is happening so rapidly in this area that you have to realise that data skills change almost every other year. Cybersecurity is one example. Several of the colleges that I promote teach cybersecurity with GCHQ. GCHQ has come out of its closet to say that it will support these schools. That is not done in normal state schools.

These schools also teach virtual reality—helmets on heads—and gaming and all that sort of thing. We are the centre of the gaming industry. Again, this is not in normal schools today. The only exam is a GCSE in computer science. My grandson has recently taken it—he did very well—but all they do is learn coding. You no longer need to learn coding, because artificial intelligence codes quicker and is more accurate. The only GSCE that we have in computing, which is taken by only 13% of the children, teaches something that they will no longer need. This shows how important this review will be.

To stay on skills for a moment, it is really very important to change the whole mentality and approach. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester said that the approach of the Church of England was “Wisdom, knowledge and skills”. I benefited from that, as I went to a Church of England primary school when we were evacuated to Southport. It really was the basis of my education. It is important to have that mixture. In the university technical colleges that I have been promoting for the past 15 years, we try to have that. First, they are for 14 to 18 year-olds. Fourteen is very important as a transfer age in education; the rest of the world tends to transfer at 14. Europe is moving from lower secondary to upper secondary at 14 and America changes at 14. We are the only country that is stuck with 11 and 16. We have 11 because it was once the school leaving age and 16 because that was also once the school leaving age. The school leaving age should no longer be the determination. The private sector in Britian, as noble Lords know, changes at nine and 13 or 14, as the rest of the world does. This is something that I hope the review committee will look at very carefully indeed.

You cannot just turn on technical and cultural education with one switch. It is much more complicated than that. The real success of our schools is that we get local companies—whether the school is in Newcastle, Plymouth, Birmingham or Norfolk—to determine what should be taught in the curriculum, because that is what affects the local community. In Birmingham it is cars, but we have also now discovered that jewellery is a very important industry in Birmingham. This September, we will have jewellery courses, on manufacture and training, in the Aston UTC. One has to develop these sorts of local things. Technical education does not work without the active support of local companies. By “active”, I mean that they sit on the board, help to determine the curriculum, bring in projects for students to work on in teams, and get involved in the schools, just as the local university does. That is the sort of education that we should have in this century.

I am very hopeful that we have now got to the stage where change will happen. It really must. If the Government are to get a 1% improvement in the country’s economic performance, we will have to produce more skilled people in our country. Otherwise, the alternative is to import more from overseas. The Government are quite right to promote wind farms, both offshore and onshore, but the Minister will discover that at least 25% or 30% of the people managing the large offshore one at Grimsby come from overseas. There is a huge task to be done in training people in all these skills.

I very much hope that we are at the dawn of a very different and new age. I hope that it will be done with cross-party support. I hope to persuade my party to support what the Government are doing. It might be quite a difficult task from time to time, but I will do my best.

Some of us have been making repeated observations about the decline in the take-up of arts subjects for some time. The trend is graphically illustrated by both this report and the new The State of the Arts report, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Blower. It was produced by Campaign for the Arts and the University of Warwick and had a well-attended launch in this House on Monday. It has a brilliant cover designed by Bob and Roberta Smith, the beneficiary of a more enlightened time in arts education. I hope the Minister will look carefully at that report as well.

The committee’s report rightly recommends moving away from a focus on a knowledge-rich approach towards a broader approach that includes skills and other non-academic subjects. On Wednesday, we had an Oral Question on the relationship between mental health and poor school attendance. I wonder how much of a circular argument that is and whether a different approach to education will also have an effect in this regard—an approach that does not rely so much on the sometimes deadening experience of “rote learning and ‘cramming’”, as the report puts it. Learning should be a joyful and fun experience. This is all about teaching to the individual child, not teaching to the test.

This is not to say that knowledge within certain contexts is a bad thing, but those contexts ought to be as meaningful as possible to the student. My daughter, who is now at drama school, is very much a case in point. She has no problem memorising pages and pages of a script for a play in which she is performing, but found it difficult at school to marshal facts and regurgitate the often already clichéd arguments that need to be put down in an essay in a specified time, which is great—well, perhaps great—if you want to be an academic, but she wants to be an actor. Those kinds of creative skills—in drama, music and the visual arts—are not taught enough in state schools and are certainly at present less available to underprivileged pupils.

One thing that is particularly good about this report is that it has cast its net wide; it has gathered evidence from many educational corners, including initiatives in independent schools, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said. I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, had a hand in that. One such initiative is Rethinking Assessment, which works between the independent and state sectors and from which the committee took evidence. The report recommends:

“In the shorter term, improvements could be made by increasing the use of coursework or other forms of non-exam assessment, including project-based qualifications”.

It is clear that such assessments go hand in hand with a move away from a knowledge-rich approach.

Reinstating and reinvigorating creative subjects will not in practice be just about removing the EBacc—one of the recommendations of the report—or about perception. It will also be about money. One of the things that at present distinguishes the arts offer in many independent schools is a willingness to spend money on performing arts facilities, art studios and musical instruments. In my view, music should be brought back into our state schools. While culture is increasingly consumed digitally, these kinds of production facilities still remain hugely important for schools, alongside digital media.

While Becky Francis carries out her review, we seem to be in that period of re-entry to the atmosphere called “blackout”, when there is radio silence. There are strong hints, and I hope the Minister will give us as much detail as she can. I hope Becky Francis takes on board the recommendations of this excellent report and what we say in this debate as well.

Nevertheless, while we look to the future, it is only fair that we recognise that education reforms introduced by previous Conservative Governments have successfully improved standards and were designed to address the concern at the time that the previous qualifications did not adequately prepare young people for the demands of the workplace or higher study. They have had success. But, with the last full-scale review of the curriculum being over a decade ago, it is timely to consider what and whether changes are now needed.

The evidence we heard suggested that what and how pupils learn in the 11 to 16 phase needs to be reconsidered. Access to the internet, the advent of AI and the possibilities these hold for access to information and learning must lead us to examine whether such a strong, continued focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum which necessitates narrow teaching methods at the expense of pupils having the opportunity to develop broader skills—

“collaboration, creative thinking, critical thinking and communication”,

as one of our witnesses described them—continues to be the right approach.

Data from the survey platform Teacher Tapp found that 76% of teachers felt there was too much content to cover in their GCSE classes and that 57% were unable or only just about able to complete teaching their course prior to exam season. At our session with young people—which, as we have heard, impacted quite a lot of us—several participants talked about their teachers being unable to take questions during lessons because there was too much material to get through, which the pupils felt stifled their ability to really engage with their learning and the deeper understanding they were trying to develop.

So in recognising the need to continue to improve outcomes for young people, the committee, as we have heard, made a series of recommendations in relation to the 11 to 16 curriculum in our report aimed at rebalancing it. In particular, we recommended that the Government look at reducing the overall content load of the 11 to 16 curriculum, specifically on GCSE subject curricula, to allow pupils greater opportunities to develop and apply the essential skills they need to thrive in the future, and to give teachers greater flexibility to foster curiosity and deeper understanding of learning in the classroom.

Indeed, as we say in the report:

“A revised curriculum should enable schools to offer a more varied range of learning experiences, with the aim of promoting the development of a broader set of knowledge, skills and behaviours”.

Mindful of the disruption that wholesale change can cause—a concern raised by a number of those who gave evidence to the committee—we proposed that the Government should undertake a review to establish how this can be achieved and publish its findings. As we set out clearly in the report, supporting pupils to achieve a basic standard of literacy and numeracy must remain a core purpose of the 11 to 16 system.

We therefore also recommended that high-quality level-2 literacy and numeracy qualifications focus on the application of essential skills and that genuinely different and distinct qualifications from the discipline-based English and maths GCSEs qualifications be developed. Again, we proposed that the Government consult on whether the existing English and maths functional skills qualifications could fulfil that purpose or whether the development of new qualifications was needed.

In light of the recommendations, I—like all noble Lords, I think, who have spoken so far and who I suspect will speak in the debate—welcome the curriculum and assessment review announced last week by the Government and the opportunity it offers for an informed evidence-based debate on what a curriculum that delivers a high standard of education and equips young people with the skills and breadth of knowledge they need to flourish might look like over the coming decades. I hope this will be a genuinely open exercise based, as we say, on evidence and not preconceived ideas, one that recognises the achievements that have been made in our education system over the last decade and builds on them but which also unashamedly looks to the future to ensure that our education system continues to give young people the best start in life.

I hope that the Minister in her closing remarks will be able to provide more details about the review. Building on the comments of my noble friend Lord Baker, it will be critical that cross-party support comes behind a review in order that any recommendations are effectively implemented. Again, I would be very interested to hear whether the Minister could say anything about how there will be a real attempt to build consensus around this. It is such an important issue and will have such an impact on the young people of tomorrow.