Some of the proposed reforms off the back of the government’s curriculum review might not be rolled out until the next parliament, Becky Francis has said.
Francis, the head of the Education Endowment Foundation who is leading the independent review, spoke to Schools Week editor John Dickens as a call for evidence launches …
Q. What is the key message for schools from your call for evidence?
A. The purpose is to review the existing national curriculum and the statutory assessment system, including qualification pathways. The aim is to refresh the curriculum to ensure that it’s cutting edge and fit for purpose and meeting the needs of children and young people to support their future life and work.
That builds on the government’s commitment to high standards in the curriculum in England, but while ensuring that that appropriately balances ambition, excellence, relevance, flexibility and inclusivity for all our children and young people.
We want to ensure a meaningful and rigorous, high value curriculum for all. There’s lots of strength in the existing system: we’ve got a good system overall.
But we deserve great, and we deserve a great experience for all kids. Evidently, it’s a while since the curriculum has been looked at, so it’s time for a refresh, and we really want to improve experiences and ensure all young people can thrive to that end. As I’ve said, the review will absolutely be led by the data and the evidence.
Q. What are the problems the review is trying to solve?
There’s a lot of debate about the amount of content in the curriculum and the appropriateness of assessment at different stages. We’ll be wanting to look at all of that, making sure that things are fit for purpose, and definitely making sure that particular subject areas or particular key stages aren’t overburdened, and that teachers have that flexibility. To enliven the curriculum and enliven their delivery.
We are definitely wanting to look hard at post 16 and particularly within that vocational qualifications, where we know that there have been long standing debates, issues and problems.
We also want to look at questions like key stage four, the debates and questions around, for example, the amount of assessment for GCSE and so on.
Another key issue is progression and success for socio economically disadvantaged kids and other areas of vulnerability, for instance SEND pupils.
The fact that we have almost a third of young people not achieving expected outcomes at key stage 4, and we have 40% not achieving expected outcomes at key stage 2.
We really want to try to ensure that kids are better supported, basically, to enable them to thrive through the education system, and then once they go into life and work post education.
Q. What do you think will be the biggest challenge?
One of them is the challenge to do no harm. We know how easy it is to precipitate unintended consequences, particularly around accountability and performance measures. So that’s something that I have to tread very carefully with.
Another is the intersection between curriculum, pedagogy, resources, structures, accountability and so on. Often when we talk about the curriculum being over stretched, it may be that in some cases, actually the curriculum isn’t that detailed, but our understandings about what other agencies have said, or how things play out in the performance tables, are directing schools approaches.
That’s quite difficult to navigate: what is the curriculum, and what is the responsibility of other areas that are beyond our purview?
The other obvious one is the timeline. The brief is wide ranging, and we’re due to be reporting in autumn 2025, but that’s actually very galvanizing and motivates the energy on the review.
Q. The report is due to be published in Autumn 2025 – what’s the timeline after that?
The hope is that some things will be achieved within the life of the parliament. We are now thinking and planning around implementation as well.
It’s hard to speculate. But there may be some more complicated or significant areas that will require further digesting, possibly even further reviewing, so would need a longer timeline.
We have an interim report coming out in early spring, and it’s possible there might be smaller issues that can be resolved, precipitated through that report [so could come in Autumn 2026, for instance].
Q. You’re going to have a wide range of views – how will you manage that?
Opinions are welcome, but actually it’s going to be the evidence and data that the review and the review panel takes most notice of in its appraisal, so that will be where our key assessment is.
Q. What has been the steer from Phillipson?
We worked on the terms of reference together. Likewise, the review principles. The government appointed me and the review panel to provide an independent perspective and a range of expertise on how we meet the government’s ambitions.
Obviously, there’s some areas where the government wants to signal its own priorities, and that’s fine, but our job is to look at the curriculum as a whole.
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