Curriculum and Assessment Review

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I start by acknowledging the work of Professor Becky Francis and her expert advisory team on this very important and detailed review. They were set clear criteria, which the team has diligently sought to incorporate. The level of detail in the review means that, given the time available, I will not be able to comment on many of the individual recommendations, but perhaps other noble Lords will raise them.

We were pleased to see that the review builds on the reforms brought in by my noble friend Lord Gove and the right honourable Sir Nick Gibb, the former Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, and keeps key elements of curriculum and assessment reforms, including a phonics test, a focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum and subject-specific curricula, as well as formal, exam-based assessment.

One advantage of the slight delay between the Government publishing the review and then announcing their response is that, over the past few days, there has been a veritable litany of blogs and commentaries from real experts in this area. A few things from those have started to emerge, which I hope that the Minister will be able to comment on.

First, there seems to be a divide between the advocates of specific subjects, whether citizenship, digital literacy, media literacy, climate change, financial education or the performing arts. The enthusiasts for all those subjects are broadly happy, because their subject is now in, but they are beginning to worry about implementation. Indeed, I heard one advocate of financial education pointing out that although this already exists in the secondary curriculum, many secondary school pupils are not even aware that they have had a financial education lesson. As ever, implementation will be key.

Conversely, those who I would describe as the real curriculum experts are bringing a much more worried tone, as are those who lead some of our most successful schools and trusts. They are worried both by the extension of the curriculum and what that means for powerful knowledge and depth of understanding, and by the way it is being measured. So my questions and concerns reflect some of those of our greatest experts and practitioners and focus particularly on where the Government have diverged from the review’s recommendations.

As Professor Dylan Wiliam said, assessment operationalises the curriculum. It is where the rubber hits the road and, by extension, measurement of a school’s progress also shapes what is taught. In that context, we are concerned about the loss of the EBacc, which had led to a 10-percentage point increase in the uptake of history and geography GCSEs between 2010 and 2024, and also stemmed the decline in modern foreign language GCSEs. We have seen the percentage of disadvantaged pupils who do the EBacc rise from 9% in 2011 to 29% in 2024, and that is what opens doors and drives social mobility. What modelling have the Government done of the likely decline in these subjects in the absence of the EBacc, especially in relation to modern foreign languages?

Even more troubling, perhaps, are the changes to Progress 8, where the review was very clear that with some cosmetic changes to titles, Progress 8 should stay unchanged in substance. There is, I would say, a near-universal view from experts that the changes will lead to a lowering of standards for all children but, most importantly, for the underprivileged. I particularly acknowledge very thoughtful blogs and Twitter threads from Matt Burnage of Ark Soane and Stuart Lock of the Advantage Schools trust. Having invested in the evidence-led approach of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, what was the evidence on which the Government based their decision to deviate from the review’s recommendation in relation to Progress 8? What would the Minister say to school leaders who are already worrying that this will see an increase in breadth at the expense of depth? What would she say, more importantly, to those leaders who say, rightly, that schools do not operate in isolation, so there will be a pressure to choose easier options for pupils, especially disadvantaged pupils—the exact pupils the Government want to help?

The push for rigour, for the rights of all pupils to access the best of what has been written, thought and said, will erode. Key, as ever, will be implementation. To take just one example of curriculum change—

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

Just how long will this take? Will the Back-Benchers ever get in?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

They will get 20 minutes.

To take one example of curriculum change and how to spot misinformation, as Daisy Christodoulou wrote in her recent blog on the Pacific Northwest tree octopus, there is a risk that we end up with simple checklists that aim to identify misinformation but which, in practice, work only if the pupil has enough knowledge to assess it. Will the Government take the advice of experts in this area and pilot the changes to this element of the curriculum that they propose?

Will the Minister clarify the timing of the introduction of the new curriculum? As noble Lords may have worked out, it will be 2042 before there are 18 year-olds whose whole schooling has been shaped by this review. The elements that risk eroding quality will kick in very quickly; those that might improve it are far, far away. I hope the Minister can also reassure us that, as Professor Becky Francis herself said, the things that will influence outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in the short term—notably, attendance and behaviour—are also outside the curriculum.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister and the Government on accepting the major recommendation of the Becky Francis report, which was to remove the EBacc curriculum that was imposed on all schools by Michael Gove—now the noble Lord, Lord Gove—in 2010. The EBacc consists of eight academic subjects. Word for word, the same subjects were taught in our schools from 1904, and so for 14 years we have had an Edwardian curriculum. It is not surprising that disadvantaged children were not helped. When the Conservatives came into office, there were just over 300,000 disadvantaged students; when they left office 14 years later, there were more than 300,000 disadvantaged students, and that is a disgrace. The other effect of the EBacc is that, when the Conservatives were in office, youth unemployment rose to 13.6%. That is almost the highest rate in Europe and double what it is in Germany. One of the tasks of this Government must be to reduce that level of youth unemployment.

I will say one thing. I hope that the Minister will refute the comments made last week by the noble Lord, Lord Gove, who said, in effect, that by abolishing the EBacc, social expansion and social development would somehow be destroyed in schools. The reality is the exact reverse: when comprehensives will be allowed to take more cultural subjects and more subjects on climate change, data skills and AI, they will find that social responsibility expands dramatically. That is the lesson of the university technical colleges that I have been promoting for the past 14 years. We have an unemployment rate of 5%, but young people leaving school have an unemployment rate of 13.6%—that is totally and utterly unacceptable.

I will say one other thing; I must try to be briefer than some of the other speakers. I will discuss only one element—another interesting thought to give the House. In the Becky Francis report, she said that she wanted to stand for “evolution not revolution”. I am afraid that the reality is completely the reverse. The way that the Government are making changes, first in skills—the noble Baroness is the Skills Minister—V-levels and all of that, and now the Becky Francis report, and now the Bill going through—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

I am going to sit down in a moment.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

May the noble Lord wind up, because we have other speakers coming up as well?

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

Some of the long speeches we hear are not from the Back Benches but from the Front Benches, if I may say so. The only comment I will make is that the Government have in fact embarked on revolution, not evolution.