GCSE reforms to blame for decline in arts
GCSE reforms have led to a drastic decline in music and arts and must be scrapped, the man who created the qualification has said.
Lord Kenneth Baker, who was education secretary under Margaret Thatcher, has blamed the English Baccalaureate – known as the Ebacc – for “squeezing out” technical, cultural and creative subjects from schools.
The Ebacc has been championed by the Government since being established in 2010 by the former education secretary Michael Gove in a bid to reverse the “dumbing down” of GCSES.
In order to obtain the award, which counts towards a school’s league table position, students must obtain five good GCSES in maths, English literature, English language, at least two sciences, a language, and either history or geography.
But Lord Baker said that the Ebacc has “done a lot of damage” to subjects such as design and technology (DT), drama, music, art and dance, which have seen “absolutely devastating” drops in entries over the past decade.
His comments come as thousands of students across the country prepare to pick up GCSE results on Thursday.
In a letter to Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, he points out that since 2010, entries for DT have fallen by 65 per cent, dance by 46 per cent, drama by 29 per cent and music by 24 per cent.
The letter – signed by the former education secretaries Lord Blunkett and Baroness Morris as well as the former Ofsted chief inspectors Sir Michael Wilshaw and Sir Mike Tomlinson – argues that “the imposition of the Ebacc” has been a significant factor in these steep declines.
Officials at the Department for Education (DFE) have already admitted that they will not meet their original target
for 90 per cent of schools to enter all their pupils for the Ebacc by 2020.
After an initial rise in pupils being entered between 2012 and 2013, the proportion has failed to rise beyond 35 to 40 per cent for the past five years, figures show.
The Ebacc has been a “costly and damaging experiment”, which has “failed and is virtually indefensible”, the letter concludes as it urges ministers to allow students greater choice over their GCSE subjects aside from English, maths and science.
Lord Baker, who served as education secretary from 1986 to 1989, told The Daily Telegraph that it is “disgraceful” that the Ebacc is still “hanging around”. He cited a Sutton Trust report that found that the Ebacc has not helped disadvantaged students, adding that the fact that poorer children are still falling behind their better off peers is a “national disgrace”.
A study published earlier this year by the Education Policy Institute found that children from poorer backgrounds are finishing a year and a half behind their peers by the end of GCSES.
In the past year, the gap between rich and poor children widened by 0.2 months to 18.1 months, the study found.
Lord Baker introduced the General Certificate of Education (GCSE) over two years, between 1986 and 1988, to replace the O-level and the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) exams.
A DFE spokesman said: “The Ebacc is at the core of our mission to drive up social mobility by encouraging all young people to take the core academic subjects that are essential for keeping their options open for further study and careers. The Ebacc, which should be studied with subjects like the arts that reflect pupils’ interests, has been instrumental in halting and reversing the decline in uptake of languages at GCSE.”