Will the Francis curriculum and assessment review provide the radical look at the in-the-round impact of England’s school system on young people that is desperately needed? It seems unlikely.

But I would love to be proven wrong on this.

 

England’s secondary schools are in an unhealthy state, a lot of evidence which is set out below suggests. Will tomorrow’s curriculum and assessment review, and the government response to it, address this?

The initial indications of prospects for a truly deep look at the educational offer for children, from the 15-month review instigated by Labour in its first weeks of government, have not been encouraging.

The review has said that it has received more than 7,000 consultation responses, and it is happening under an experienced and serious team led by Professor Becky Francis of the Education Endowment Foundation. But its “evolution not revolution” approach gives every indication, at least as of its interim report which was published in the spring, of not taking nearly seriously enough a range of highly concerning indicators on the state of our system.

As I wrote last month, the interim review gave the impression of an existing curriculum and assessment set-up that needs a bit of sprucing up, or “refreshing,” rather than something more fundamental. It emphasised what have been in reality small changes in English/UK results in international tests, as evidence of our system’s success in recent years, but without acknowledging a raft of troubling other indicators on, for example, young people’s mental health. 

Indeed, in places the review seemed to characterise the success of England’s education system entirely in terms of exam results, its interim report stating: “The Review Panel recognises the hard-won successes and educational improvements of the last quarter-century, we share the widely held ambition to promote high standards…our ambition is ‘high standards for all’.”

Concerning indicators on young people’s school/life satisfaction

Against this, it is worth setting out again a few of those data points on young people’s views on the education system and on their own life satisfaction, with the review’s final document reported to be coming tomorrow. I have referenced some – though not all - of these data points several times in recent months, but they do bear repeating.

Earlier this year, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) found the number of English 14-year-olds disagreeing with the statement “I like being in school” had doubled between 2015 and 2023, from 24 to 48 per cent. This left England with the third-highest school dissatisfaction measure of any 47 jurisdictions in this well-known testing survey, and the second-highest among those jurisdictions in terms of those disagreeing a lot that “I like being in school,” with English dissatisfaction rates having climbed far higher than the international average over this period. 

Our figures for primary-age children showed a worrying trend, too, with 28 per cent of English 10-year-olds disagreeing with the statement above in 2023, compared with 14 per cent in 2015, although clearly these figures represent lower raw dissatisfaction rates than for English teenagers.

The UK’s 15-year-olds were found, based on “PISA” international test data, to have among the lowest life satisfaction rates in the OECD. 

Home education rates have been climbing dramatically. A survey of 6,000 parents reported last month that pupil unhappiness doubles between primary and secondary. Analysis by Professor John Jerrim at the UCL Institute of Education, based on the TIMSS data, has shown that children’s emotional engagement with school drops off more sharply in England elsewhere, “suggesting that disengagement is not just a symptom of age, but something atypical is happening in our context”.

Analysis last month by FFT Education Datalab also showed that rates of severe absence among pupils double as soon as they leave primary school, with rates steadily climbing throughout secondary until they are five times that of primary, as of year 10 and 11. 

This strikes me as a system, especially at secondary school level, which is showing itself as being in far from good health, at least if by being in good health we mean it is producing healthy outcomes in the round for as many young people as is possible.

Mind report on mental health and statement on schools

Further evidence on this front came last week, in a report by the charity Mind. Its “Big Mental Health Report,” which found that one in five adults in England overall is living with a common mental health problem, reported a similar figure for eight- to 25-year-olds and that their mental health is getting worse. 

Its section on young people’s experiences of education is worth reading.

It says: “Schools and colleges should be a protective space for young people, a place where they feel supported, connected and able to thrive. But for too many, it’s becoming a source of distress.

“Where the right support isn’t in place, or when environments feel unsafe or punitive, school can contribute to poor mental health rather than help prevent it…

“A Welsh Government commissioned report identified unmet mental health needs as a common reason parents gave for children missing school. It’s likely that poor school attendance and poor mental health are cyclical – they affect one another and without support both can escalate into serious problems.

“Pupils consistently highlight the heavy toll exam pressures are having on their mental health, including 2015 changes to GCSE assessments [including the removal of much coursework assessment] which have contributed to an ‘all or nothing’ environment which many pupils and staff describe as overwhelming.

“A recent survey found that in England, 63 per cent of 15- to 18-year-olds said they struggled to cope in the lead up to and during GCSE and A-level exams. Of those, 15% stopped going to school, 13% had suicidal thoughts, 13% self-harmed and 56% had trouble sleeping.” (Last year, a survey of secondary school teachers also reportedly found more than three quarters of respondents “reported seeing mental health issues related to exam anxiety in their Year 11 students”). 

The Mind document also featured a case study with a young woman who said the transition between primary and secondary school had “felt scary,” and that she had not felt there “was much care or consideration, I was just a number.” Masking mental health problems, she had started going sick from school, and was home educated from year nine.

Could this inquiry take such a message to those working in the schools system?

A government inquiry which found that there was much evidence suggesting elements of England’s school system were not operating in a health way for many of their young people would be a tough message for ministers to bring, to hard-working professionals who do their utmost to support the children in their care.

It is more soothing for the current review to suggest, as it did in its interim report, that the system is largely a success because of the “continued commitment to high and rising standards in state education across the last quarter of a century”.

Yes, there has been a lot of hard work and that commitment is admirable. But this does not mean that system problems, in terms of outcomes which surely must be put at least alongside test results in the weighing of its overall health, should be ignored.

Addressing this

Not all of these problems are ones which strictly could be addressed by a curriculum and assessment review. Some of the above passage in the Mind document, for example, may imply a comment on school behaviour policies – the word “punitive” suggests so – which can have a big impact on young people’s experience of education, especially in terms of how the system views them, but where policymaking in my view since the last government has been far too one-sided. That is, what can be angry and un-nuanced voices in favour of traditionalist behaviour approaches have dominated the list of those allowing to advise policymakers, with counter-vailing expertise from, for example, psychologists or educationists with a different perspective, let alone young people’s voices themselves, seemingly not permitted to get close to the Department for Education. If the impacts on young people are as serious as the Mind report suggests, this is a major problem. 

Looking after the wellbeing and life satisfaction of those adults working in this system is also vital, clearly. Last week’s proposal from the government that teachers are awarded only a 6.5 per cent cumulative pay increase over three years – at current levels of inflation, a real-terms pay cut – hardly inspired confidence on that front. But, again, this is strictly beyond the scope of the Francis review.

Beyond that, though, there are issues that the review could have looked at radically. One, of course, is the place of exams. The interim review did give hints that its final document might recommend the end of the EBacc measure, and investigate the overall weight of assessment for young people, but again the sense has been one of cautious change – less radical than proposals from exam boards that the number of GCSEs could be drastically cut, without affecting reliability – or of a school leader’s union having raised questions about a GCSE system which effectively ensures that a large minority of young people emerges from education without a good measure of success. (The Association of School and College Leaders also suggested, last year, that GCSE tests could be spread over two years to ease the end-of-course stress on students).

Within the curriculum, there seems a good case that at least some reforms under the Conservatives have not left schools in a healthy place. In English, for example, there have been criticisms from the National Association for the Teaching of English, the English Association and the exam boards OCR and AQA that current specifications are not fit for purpose, with an OCR report quoting a teacher stating that: “We have killed this subject with the new, terribly boring GCSE”. Reforms in computing, too, have proven contentious, with the numbers of pupils studying what of course is by definition a future-facing subject having fallen off a cliff in recent years.

And overall, children attending schools in poorer areas are now much more likely than they were a decade ago not to be offered courses in design and technology, music, or performing arts.

All of this deeply affects children’s school experience. But, again, will it be addressed by tomorrow’s report?

Likely changes flagged up so far

Newspaper articles since the weekend indicate that a raft of individual policy changes will be recommended by the final report. There will be, for example, a statutory entitlement for pupils to be able to study triple science GCSE, rather than only being offered the route which combines the three into two subject spaces: double science. There will reportedly be a greater emphasis on local history within history lessons. And the Sunday Times even flagged up the fact that the Francis review was likely to recommend a greater emphasis on artificial intelligence in computing GCSEs, with the government instigating an A-level of V-level in AI.

Some of these suggestions, particularly in relation to science GCSE, may have big implications for schools.

But overall, the impression so far is that these changes feel very micro.

And yet the big picture has suggested the need for a much deeper look at the current system, and a much more committed investigation of more radical change.

In the Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ “Scene Setter” speech this morning ahead of the budget, she said that: “There is nothing progressive about refusing to reform a system that is leaving one in eight young people out of education and employment.” 

She appeared to be referring to reforming social security or welfare payments. However, if indeed elements of the education system are contributing to this problem – which taking seriously some of the evidence above would imply – then serious and deep-thinking “reform” needs to be focused at education policymaking as well.

A productive economy, and a good society, is surely based upon looking after all of its people. Is our schools system doing this well? Is it producing healthy outcomes, in the round, for those who depend on it?

I think the above evidence raises profound questions about this, particularly – it has to be said and despite the hard work of all of those working within this sector – in terms of the way secondary school education has been set up and is currently operating.

In terms of the prospects of this being taken as seriously as it needs to be in tomorrow’s report, the indications so far have not been encouraging.

But I hope Professor Francis and the team will prove me wrong on all of this.