Science for all
The plan to offer all pupils the opportunity to study triple science from 2028 is welcome in as much as it tackles longstanding inequities.
Only about 13 per cent of disadvantaged pupils take triple science, compared to 28 per cent from more affluent backgrounds.
Plus, too many under-resourced schools cannot offer it at all, despite the evidence that triple science is associated with greater science uptake for A-level and degree studies.
Only a quarter of post-16 students study enough science to continue into science-related degrees or careers. For most, GCSE science is their final formal encounter with the subject and many of these students complain of a lack of relevance.
The curriculum must therefore serve two purposes: to prepare future scientists and to ensure all young people can apply scientific reasoning, understand uncertainty, identify misinformation and weigh evidence in their everyday and civic lives.
If triple science is to be an entitlement, we also need a parallel route that recognises a different aspiration; one that assesses scientific literacy and systems understanding, not just recall of disciplinary content.
A reimagined single science qualification could provide this, ensuring that every student leaves school with science that is both meaningful and measurable.
Gareth Shackleton, science teacher at Berwick Academy
Mind the language gap
The curriculum and assessment review leads off with fine words about the purpose of its proposals and our education system.
It reads: “Our diversity and commitment to equality of opportunity and fairness are some of this country’s greatest strengths.
“Throughout the Review we are seeking to deliver a curriculum that reflects the issues and diversities of our society, ensuring all children and young people are represented, whilst also exposing them to a wide range of perspectives that broaden their horizons.”
All this matters, not least in a society fractured by a lack of respect for diversity.
But it is passing strange that the report makes but just one reference – in footnote 229 – to the great diversity, which central to our society, of multilingualism. More than 20 per cent of primary pupils are categorised as English as an additional language (EAL), and that massively understates their multilingualism.
Instead of constructing a language curriculum to value, explore and celebrate that diversity, the review has re-asserted the centrality of European languages in a world that is changed utterly.
John Claughton, former chief master of King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and co-founder of World of Languages, Languages of the World
Seeing ourselves
The recommendations to make the curriculum more inclusive are to be welcomed (Curriculum review: All the key policy recommendations, November 4).
If we are to turn the tide on the rising school absence, suspensions and exclusions, we must increase pupils’ sense of belonging, and make sure that young people can see themselves in the authors, artists, mathematicians and scientists they learn about.
Updating the curriculum is essential to making sure all young people feel welcomed and included at school.
But this commitment to inclusion must also be reflected in recruiting the teachers who pupils see every day in their classrooms – 60 per cent of our schools have an all-white teaching team.
Jason Arthur, Chief executive at Mission 44
Teaching fatigue
When I read about all these new initiatives it makes me feel so relieved I am retired (Heads say SEND league tables won’t improve provision, November 6).
I don’t think anyone who hasn’t actually taught understands how exhausting and demoralising it is to be effectively told you’re doing it wrong and ‘we’ll tell you what you need to do’.
League tables, Ofsted, continuously measuring results – where else is there this level of negative scrutiny?
I loved teaching. In the end it was poor senior leaders and parents that forced me out – both incited by the media portrayal and government attitudes.
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