Curriculum and Assessment Review

Laura Trott Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. I also thank Professor Francis for her work—any criticism of today’s announcement is directed not at her, but at the Government’s response to her review.

I welcome some of the measures announced today. I am pleased that the Government have not moved away from our phonics reforms. In 2012, only 58% of six-year-olds met the expected reading standard; today, the figure stands at over 80%. Primary school children in England are now the best readers in the western world.

I also note the introduction of a year 8 reading test, which I support in principle. If properly implemented, this could help to ensure that pupils maintain strong reading skills into secondary school. However, the review recommends maths and English tests, so why is the Secretary of State not introducing a statutory maths test?

I have serious concerns that the proposed wider changes will water down standards, lower expectations and divert teaching time away from the core education, which gives every child the best chance to get on in life. The temptation to make the curriculum a repository for every social concern is ever present, but when everything is a priority, nothing is. If we keep adding and adding, we risk diluting the very core that underpins academic success. There are many things that the Government talk about adding to the curriculum, but there is little honesty about what will be squeezed out as a result. I hope that the Secretary of State will be honest about what is being taken out of the curriculum, particularly in primary schools.

Let me make some specific points. First, the review states:

“It is vital that schools and colleges are able to innovate…and that teachers have the flexibility to extend the curriculum”.

I agree, but the Government’s disastrous Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill does precisely the opposite, by making the national curriculum compulsory for all schools and stripping away teachers’ freedom to adapt to the needs of pupils. It is nonsensical to talk about innovation while stifling it. The Secretary of State should abandon her assault on academy freedoms.

Secondly, the Government propose to reduce the number of exams by 10%, on the grounds that “only Singapore does more”. Well, Singapore also tops the international league tables in maths and literacy. Surely we should be learning from Singapore’s education system, not disparaging it.

Thirdly, the Government propose to abolish the English baccalaureate, which we put in place in order to give all children the chance to learn an academic core. Scrapping the EBacc is a backwards step. It will steer pupils away from history and languages, leaving fewer children with an understanding of our national story and fewer equipped to engage in a global economy. The irony is not lost on me that the Education Secretary herself studied history and languages. Why is she pulling up the drawbridge behind her and denying more young people the very opportunities that she benefited from?

Fourthly, the Education Secretary will introduce a new compulsory citizenship curriculum for primary schools. Forcing primary schools to use precious time to teach deprived pupils about media literacy and climate change before ensuring that they can read, write and add up is not going to encourage social mobility, which I thought Labour Members cared about. It is not clear at all how they are going to make time for this. What aspects of children’s education are being sacrificed for the Secretary of State’s political posturing?

As for new lessons on digital literacy and misinformation, I feel like a broken record. The Education Secretary said on the radio this morning, “I am worried about children spending hours in their bedroom looking at poisonous material that drips hate in their ears.” I agree. The right hon. Lady is right and I have a very easy solution: get smartphones out of schools and ban all our under-16s from social media. That does not need a lesson. It is something the Government have the power to do right now to help children with the vile content that they are seeing online, and to address the behaviour issues that we are seeing in schools—social media-driven knife crime and effects on attainment. I think the Education Secretary needs a lesson on social media harms, not children.

Finally, I turn to the right hon. Lady’s changes to school accountability. Professor Francis was clear in her report: do not change Progress 8. She wrote:

“We are strongly committed to the Progress 8 measure…it supports both student progress and curriculum breadth. We are therefore recommending making no changes”.

Yet the Education Secretary has overruled the review—the independent review that she commissioned herself. Why? We have been here before. Under the last Labour Government standards fell, ambition shrank and the attainment gap widened. The number of pupils studying core academic subjects halved. Britain slid down international rankings. It took Conservative reformers, like Michael Gove and Nick Gibb, to turn that around with evidence-driven policy, rigorous assessment and high expectation.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Ms Trott, you have run over your time. I hope you are going to conclude very quickly.

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[Laura Trott]

That formula works, with English schools storming back up the global rankings.

We on the Conservative Benches will always stand up for rigour, evidence and the life-changing power of high standards. We will fight Labour’s education vandalism every step of the way.

[Bridget Phillipson]

The right hon. Lady said at the start that any criticism was levelled my way, but she then went on to criticise many of the recommendations in the review. Has she even bothered to read it at all? She comes here time and again, every single time full of sound and fury, signifying nothing—and yes, Shakespeare is here to stay on the national curriculum. She tries to paint the report and our response as undoing the achievements in schools. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are not abandoning it; we are building on it, with a curriculum that will allow all young people to achieve high standards, with core academic subjects alongside the breadth that they deserve.

Our reforms have higher standards right at their heart. They will raise standards of pupils right across the curriculum, including in speaking and listening, reading, writing and maths. Our improved Progress 8 and Attainment 8 measures will ensure that students retain a strong academic core, but with a breadth to expand into further study. The right hon. Lady might oppose the changes we are setting out, but today they have won support from the Sutton Trust, from employers like the CBI and from Sir Hamid Patel, the wonderful leader at Star Academies, who backs the changes we are making, saying that they

“signal both a welcome emphasis on creativity—reflecting amazing career opportunities…but with continued affirmation that success in English and mathematics is crucial for everyone’s life chances.”

I could not agree more.

We know that it is important that our new measures provide breadth and enrichment. Leaving aside that the arts and creative subjects are worth up to £125 billion to our country and employ 2.4 million people, I want more young people to have brilliant careers and opportunities in those fields. The two are not in opposition. We can and will deliver high and strong academic standards, alongside making sure that a broad and rich curriculum is the entitlement of every child. There was once a time when the Conservatives supported that idea. It is why they introduced a national curriculum to apply in every school. We are restoring the Conservative principle of the national curriculum applying for every child. I benefited from that, and I want every child in our country to benefit from it.

The curriculum has not been updated for over a decade. Parents want one that is fit for the future, employers back what we are doing and children deserve it. The changes we are setting out today will secure better life chances for all our children.

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[Laura Trott]

It doesn’t!

[Darren Paffey]

I will listen to the experts before I listen to the Front Bench any day—the Opposition Front Bench. [Laughter.] If the right hon. Member listens, she will hear that. Will the Secretary of State please look at the overall load throughout school, not just in GCSE year, and comment on how she sees the introduction of an additional year 8 diagnostic panning out?

On my second question, I declare an interest as the vice chair of the all-party parliamentary group on modern languages. We broadly welcome the Government’s response, which goes further than the recommendations, and the recognition of importance. It is right to scrap the EBacc, which has never really been taken seriously by professionals, but will the Secretary of State please say how she will stop uptake from dropping immediately? What other incentives will there be? When will she deliver the feasibility review of the new qualification based on languages ladder expertise, which is welcomed by the sector ?