Curriculum and Assessment Review

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I can give the noble Baroness the assurance she asks for on the development of the oracy framework. As she has identified, being able to speak and listen is an enormously important skill that employers say they need young people to have. On the point about media literacy, as she says, in a world in which young people need to distinguish misinformation and disinformation, it is enormously important that they are supported with media literacy. That is why media literacy will be embedded in English, in history and in citizenship. I share her view about the importance of the BBC, both at home and abroad.

[Baroness Keeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Curriculum and Assessment Review, particularly the removal of the EBacc, which has damaged the provision of arts and music education in state schools. I also welcome the emphasis on both media literacy and music provision in the curriculum. It is important to highlight the significant inequalities in access to music in state schools. The annexe to the review highlights that in 2023-24, one in four young people may not have been able to access a music qualification at key stage 4 in their school, even if they wanted to.

A further aspect of inequality highlighted in the review concerns those pupils whose parents cannot afford extracurricular tuition. Can my noble friend the Minister assure me that the Government will double down on these inequalities to ensure that the ability to read music and play an instrument becomes available to all students in state schools, and that the number of specialist music teachers will start to be restored to the much higher level it was at in 2011?