THE Bishop of Chichester, Dr Martin Warner, paid tribute to the hard work of teachers and school volunteers on Monday, and called for music, art, sport, and drama to be given renewed focus in secondary education.
Dr Warner was speaking in a House of Lords debate about a cross-party report on secondary education, ahead of a review of the national curriculum instigated by the new Government.
The Church should be included among the stakeholders consulted in the review, he said, suggesting that the tone of the statement announcing the process “chimes” with the Church of England’s vision for education, “which outlines wisdom, knowledge, and skills as the framework for nurturing capacity for decision-making, ethical considerations, and social and environmental responsibility”.
Performing-arts education could help to tackle “insecurities and unexamined prejudice”, he said, and “break down stereotypes of gender and sexual orientation”.
Dr Warner joined episcopal colleagues in the Lords in calling for the two-child benefits cap to be abolished. The new Government has faced rebellion from among its own MPs for not immediately pledging to scrap the policy (News, 26 July).
Lord Johnson of Marleybone, who, as an MP, was a minister in the Department for Education between 2015 and 2018, chaired the House of Lords committee that compiled the previous report. He said that the inquiry was “established in response to a growing sense that the present 11-to-16 system of education in England has been moving in the wrong direction.”
The focus on “knowledge acquisition and academic rigour” was said by respondents to the study to “not equip young people with the knowledge, skills and behaviours that they need to progress to the next phase of their education and to flourish in the future.”
The report was delivered last year, and received a response from the Government in February. That response, Lord Johnson said on Tuesday, was “disappointing, to say the least”.
The response declined to review the quantity of knowledge that students were required to memorise at GCSE level, judging it to be in line with “high-performing education systems”.
The prioritisation of a core of academic subjects in order to fulfil government targets was premised on the entry requirements of Russell Group universities, but did not give sufficient flexibility for the majority who did not pursue this route, Lord Johnson said.
Schools should instead be given the “flexibility to offer the qualifications that would best serve their pupils, including creative, technical, and vocational subjects, and not give undue emphasis to the university route”, he said.
The assessment system should also be “slimmed-down” and “less onerous”, he said — another proposal which the previous Government rejected, but to which the new Government has indicated it is open, as it conducts a further review into secondary education.
A Labour peer, Baroness Blower, who was also on the committee, said that the new Government’s stated desire for a more inclusive and accessible curriculum was an “appropriate aspiration for our education system”.