Curriculum and Assessment Review

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Freyberg for getting this important debate and declare, as ever, that I am a secondary school teacher. Several people have asked me recently why I always declare myself as a teacher, and I always answer, because I have to, but I would anyway. I am very proud of being a teacher. People tend to be interested when you say you are a teacher. I think this goes back to the Blair years, when the status of teachers rose dramatically. I am optimistic that with the CAR, the response and the White Papers we have the opportunity of a similar renaissance.

On Wednesday, I chaired a meeting of the APPG for Art, Craft and Design in Education. The subject was continuing professional development. We heard about pedagogy, assessment objectives, autonomy, skill control and even multimodal ephemeral text. I asked the question, “What about fun?” They brightened and said, “Oh yes, we forgot to mention it was really good fun”. We have forgotten the fun. According to the National Literacy Trust, only one in three 8 to 18 year-olds enjoys reading. School refusal is at an all-time high. My answer, which is in the CAR, is to teach less content—not dumbing down but giving more space for context and criticism. Obviously, I have read enough cognitive science to know that the fundamental core of knowledge needs to be taught and drilled. I shall give the Committee an example. If I have time, I teach a lesson to my year 10 product designers on tampons, condoms and anti-personnel mines. All are designed with the human body in mind. They are designed to interact with the human body. The mine is designed to maim rather than kill. They are all designed by product designers. That lesson reinforces the concepts of anthropometrics, ergonomics, ethics and sustainability—all of which are core curriculum topics—but in a memorable way.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, has touched on, we also need to get rid of compulsory religious studies and replace it with a compulsory citizenship GCSE, which would mix issues such as religion versus humanism, financial and media literacy, and politics—perhaps with trusted partners such as BBC Verify and Bitesize Other Side of the Story. We need more time for CPD for teachers to remind them why they became teachers. If teachers are having fun, they are the best ambassadors for a profession that is still struggling to recruit; and if children are having fun, they turn up to school and they fulfil their potential.