Thousands of children at state schools are to be limited to as few as five or six GCSEs while their peers in the private sector are taught nine or ten.
As head teachers struggle to make up for months of lost learning, leading academy schools plan to focus on cramming teenagers to pass GCSEs in maths and English. In September many state pupils will be withdrawn from “soft” subjects such as art, music, design and technology, drama and even foreign languages.
Government guidance on the reopening of schools, published last Thursday, says that “in exceptional circumstances” schools can tell children to drop some GCSEs. Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, said up to 40% of pupils could be encouraged to drop subjects. Some state schools have offered no online lessons since March.
Dan Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation, one of England’s most successful academy chains with a total of 43 schools, said he planned to cut GCSEs from the usual nine or 10 for a minority of pupils. He expected other schools to do the same. Usually children in state schools in England would expect to take at least eight GCSEs.
“I don’t want to be accused of cutting the arts, but we want kids to be successful,” he said. “ I do not think they will be pleased to look back when they are 40 and see that, because of a bit of art or French or design and technology, they did not get the qualification in English or maths they needed to get a job.”
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By contrast, Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said no private school would tell children to drop subjects such as art, philosophy or music as this would “limit life chances as well as A-level choices”.
Amanda Spielman, the chief inspector of schools, warned head teachers against any mass attempt to “narrow the curriculum”. Since becoming head of Ofsted in 2017, she has fought for a “broad and balanced education”.
Spielman argued that a rich education was more important than ever for children returning to school after being cooped up in their bedrooms. She will send in inspectors from September for “constructive visits”, but issue no formal verdicts on schools until next year.
“It is a fact that many children have lost a lot of teaching. It is not something we can dance around — it has happened,” Spielman said.
“Schools should think about each child and what is right for them. I am not sure that focusing on English and maths is the kind of message anyone would expect for children at GCSE . . . I would expect adjusting at the margin, not wholesale curriculum narrowing.”
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Parents had realised the shortcomings of their efforts at homeschooling, she added. “I think lockdown has given parents a new-found respect for the job that teachers do. There was a bit of a craze, when lockdown started, of parents putting joke Ofsted grades in their window about their homeschooling: ‘bloody awful’, things like that. It’s been hard for parents to keep children motivated and provide a structure to their learning, which teachers do so well.
“Children are going to be very, very glad to be back in school. Many parents are going to be really glad to hand teaching back to the professionals.”
A former Labour education minister, Lord Adonis, also hit out at the move to drop GCSEs.
“State schools should be levelling up, not levelling down,” said Adonis. “This narrowing of the curriculum should not be happening. It will create an even bigger gulf between state and private schools.”
Ministers insist that national GCSE and A-level exams will take place next summer. It has not been decided whether schools will be ranked on exam results.