Focus On - Secondary
The English Baccalaureate What it is and the view from Government!
T
he English Baccalaureate was introduced as a performance measure in the 2010 performance tables. It is not a qualification in itself. The measure recognises where pupils have secured a C grade or better across a core of academic subjects – English, mathematics, history or geography, the sciences and a language. Since 2004 the number of non-academic qualifications taken up to age 16 has risen from about 15000 to about 575000 with a higher take-up of vocational qualifications by young people from deprived backgrounds. Many of these qualifications do not carry real weight for entry to higher education or for getting a job. There has also been a decline in the opportunity to take some core subjects, such as modern foreign languages, history and geography at Key Stage 4. The government believes that this situation disproportionately affects pupils from the poorest backgrounds or attending schools in disadvantaged areas. For example, in 2009 just four per cent of pupils qualifying for free school meals took chemistry or physics, fewer than one in five did history and fewer than 15 per cent took geography or French.
The Department for Education states: “When we look at achievement in the English
June 2012
Baccalaureate we see a similar picture of inequality - in 2010, only eight per cent of pupils qualifying for free school meals (FSM) took the English Baccalaureate, with four per cent achieving it; whilst 24 per cent of non-FSM pupils took the English Baccalaureate and 17 per cent achieved it. “It is this situation that the English Baccalaureate aims to address. We have enabled parents and pupils to see for the first time how their school is performing against these key academic subjects. We hope this will encourage schools to open up opportunities to all of their pupils to study a core of academic subjects and rectify the current inequalities that exist.”
Greater opportunities
The English Baccalaureate is intended to give pupils greater opportunity to study in and beyond the vital core of English, mathematics and the sciences. It therefore has a particular focus on key subjects which have been withdrawn from Key Stage 4 by some schools, even where pupils might benefit from them. These include, for example, languages, where research has shown that there are clear advantages in terms of cognitive skills and understanding, and history and geography, all of which are in decline.
Figures from a survey of almost 700 maintained secondary schools conducted by the National Centre for Social Research show that the English Baccalaureate is having an immediate impact, increasing the proportion of pupils taking these core academic subjects.
The survey shows that, from September 2011, 47 per cent of pupils taking GCSEs in 2013, in the schools surveyed, will be doing a combination of subjects that could lead to an English Baccalaureate. This compares with data which shows that in 2010 just 22 per cent of GCSE- stage pupils were entered for the English Baccalaureate subject combination. The take-up of history, geography and languages indicates that the English Baccalaureate is reversing the long-term drift away from these subjects, and that they are returning to the levels seen a decade ago.
“However, this does not mean we want schools to restrict options to just this academic core or to force these qualifications on pupils for whom they are not suitable. The core has deliberately been kept small to allow the opportunity for additional study – whether that is in other GCSEs or vocational qualifications.” said a spokesperson.
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