P9: English baccalaureate 

Continued from page 8

Veronica Peppiatt argues that the English baccalaureate is not all it’s cracked up to be and not fit for purpose for all pupils.

language can be Biblical Hebrew or classical Greek, but not applied French – not applied anything, in fact. Applied science and a single science are not enough either. The humanities must be history, ancient history or geography.

The Government’s rhetoric became that of denigrating failure rather than celebrating success. It added insult to injury when the new measure was applied retrospectively to the 2010 GCSE results and included in the league tables. Thus 84 per cent of the GCSE cohort was deemed to have failed something they weren’t ever aware they were being entered for.

Accountability measures such as league tables should never determine the nature of the curriculum, but inevitably they do. Michael Gove recognised this when he said the Ebac would “stop the shift to less challenging courses driven by the current perverse accountability system”.

Evidence is already emerging of some schools changing their curriculum in response to this new performance indicator, resulting in less choice for pupils. Some schools determined to stick with a wider curriculum worry that poor league table results on this new measure could have unfortunate consequences for the whole school.

Many are bemused by the notion of a ‘rounded educational experience’ which has such a narrow, academic focus, excluding as it does any reference to the arts or technology.

And why is RE not included? The number of students taking RE at GCSE has grown considerably in recent years as the importance of giving students an understanding of different faiths has been recognised. Now take-up of the subject is likely to decline as history and geography are promoted instead.

In my own school, a secular and fairly mono-ethnic comprehensive, the subject is now called IBEC rather than RE, standing for identity, belief, ethics and culture. This better reflects the nature of the syllabus.

For the last two years I have taught IBEC to year 9 and have become convinced that it needs to be a compulsory part of the curriculum. Whether it’s to do with challenging Islamophobia or grappling with the thorny issues of medical ethics, our pupils need to explore questions related to the changing world they inhabit and to understand that others will see things differently from them.

Ironically, Michael Gove and Nick Gibb both say one of the main drivers for introducing the Ebac was the fall in the number of pupils taking a foreign language GCSE. Michael Gove said this decline “breeds insularity” and Nick Gibb that it is “not acceptable in a modern world where Britain is a major global trader”. Yet the language studied can be one that hasn’t been spoken for thousands of years.

Last year Michael Gove said: “One of the things we want to see is a greater degree of curriculum flexibility, so that teachers, not bureaucrats, can decide what is in the best interest of their pupils.” Hear hear, Mr Gove! But for ‘bureaucrats’ read ‘politicians’.

Veronica Peppiatt teaches in a comprehensive school in West Sussex. She is NUT Executive member for Surrey and West Sussex and a member of the Union’s 14-19 and Examinations Task Groups.