The Curriculum and Assessment Review: A Landmark Moment?

The Curriculum and Assessment review has the potential to be a landmark moment for our education system.  

Professor Becky Francis, who is leading the review, will no doubt receive a lot of submissions to inform her recommendations. Our hope is that we can improve outcomes across the system through adopting bold yet practical changes, grounded in evidence.   

What do we Want to Achieve? 

It’s a question we must keep asking ourselves. The current knowledge-rich, assessment-heavy curriculum works well for many learners, particularly those who pursue an academic route and progress to a university degree, but for others, it’s not working to maximise their potential.  

We must think about the knowledge, skills, and experience that would set learners up for success in life and work. If we just look at curriculum without looking at learner experience, we’re not going to improve outcomes. We need a more holistic approach, centred on producing confident, well-rounded people.  

That’s why essential skills should be embedded throughout the curriculum where possible. The National Foundation for Educational Research says that “whilst specialist skills and knowledge are vital in most occupations, its transferable ‘essential employment skills’ that will be in greatest demand across the labour market in 2035.”  

NCFE, along with many others, is recommending that the Government adopt the Skills Builder Partnership’s Universal Framework to ensure they are embedded in qualifications across England.  

Enrichment can help learners develop these skills and is in itself a great leveler in social and cultural capital, which is a huge determinant of future life success. Currently, this is optional, but the recent Valuing Enrichment Project revealed that well-designed programmes can have significant positive impacts on learners, foster essential skills, and contribute to societal leveling up.  

Ultimately though, the success of the curriculum lies in the outcomes it delivers for people. The curriculum in schools has not changed significantly in decades, yet the labour market has changed much more significantly in that time – even in the last few years. This is where Skills England must play a role in aligning the two, ensuring that we’re equipping people with the relevant skills needed in our economy.  

A Level Playing Field 

Parity of esteem is an ongoing battle in the sector – and it’s a war that won’t be won unless there are fundamental changes to educational policy. You only need to look at performance table points in schools where GCSEs carry more performance points than technical qualifications, which naturally detracts schools from offering technical qualifications. 

We need more technical awards available to learners in the 14-16 space, providing choices for learners from a broader range of subjects. For those who know they want to pursue a technical career, this provides an opportunity to build a foundation at an earlier age to help them achieve mastery later in life.  

For those who have yet to make decisions on their future careers, a broader offering of subjects and learning/assessment approaches could help learners feel equipped to make more informed decisions. 

We also need to consider the knock-on effect having a limited, academically focused curriculum in schools has on further education. The English and maths GCSE re-sit policy, for example, is hugely damaging for learners, with four out of five failing to meet the standard in their re-sit, and colleges having to divert a huge number of resources to teach and assess this cohort.  

Scrapping this policy would be a ‘quick win’ and instead considering more choices when it comes to ways of evidencing learning in English and maths. For example, applied literacy and numeracy qualifications, or integrating applied literacy and numeracy into standards and assessing them as part of the course.  

In apprenticeships, there are some areas where Level 2 English and maths are a real barrier to success in occupations that do not even require this standard. In an ‘employer-led system’, should we not be listening to what the skills requirements are for each occupation rather than applying ‘one size fits all’? 

From Transactional to Transformational 

The huge amount of summative assessment across the curriculum means that exams are incredibly high stakes for learners. For example, if a learner has health or personal struggles during exam time, it can have a significant impact on their achievement and later life chances. That’s why using a wider range of assessment methods and identifying learning needs ahead of summative assessment is so important.  

Building assessment literacy in learners and educators is essential to ensure that we can use formative assessment more effectively to improve outcomes. It has long been the case that written exams are largely viewed as the most reliable, valid, and robust approach to assessment. However, other methods, such as oral assessment and observations, are likely to be more reliable and have stronger validity in assessing some aspects of technical and vocational programmes. These methods are used extensively in apprenticeship assessment.  

We need to think expansively about assessment methods to develop approaches that meet the needs of all learners, utilise emerging technology, and align effectively with the curriculum.  

We want to see a shift from transactional assessment approaches to truly transformational ones. To do this, we believe that greater use of diagnostic and formative assessment would generate quality data and assessment information, providing a well-rounded picture of the learner, including their strengths and development needs, right from the start.  

This has the potential to deliver incredible benefits, guiding more personalised teaching and learning experiences to identify and help meet individual needs. This data at a systems level would help us to understand what is working well, and why.  

Assessment opportunities should also be inclusive and accessible to all learners. Many young people and adults are facing significant delays in receiving a diagnosis for autism, ADHD, and other neurodevelopmental conditions. This emphasises the need for us to strive towards ‘assessment for inclusion’, where learners are judged solely on what a task is seeking to assess – nothing outside of that.  

Staying the Course 

Whatever changes and (hopefully!) improvements emerge from the Curriculum and Assessment review, we must give them time to succeed.  

We’ve seen a tendency for short-termism, particularly in technical and vocational education policy, for years. Rather than iterate and improve, at the first sign of trouble, there are calls to scrap – as we’re now seeing with T Levels. We believe that gradually improving T Levels will deliver greater benefits than starting all over again, 

The T Level Foundation Year, for example, should carry a Level 2 qualification as standard, providing the opportunity to achieve and leave with something if learners do not ultimately progress to a full T Level.  

There will also always be learners that don’t complete their qualification – often for a variety of reasons. What we need is a system that recognises learning in all its forms. Partial achievement and safe off-ramps to go between provision is vital.  

There is a lot to love about our education and skills system. We have incredible educators working hard to help people reach their potential, but it often feels like our approach to curriculum and assessment limits many people.  

I hope the Curriculum and Assessment review can bring us to a place where the system delivers for everyone.

By Michael Lemin, Head of Policy at NCFE