The Government's Curriculum and Assessment Review: a step towards inclusive education

Insight

12.12.2024

What is the Curriculum and Assessment Review?

The UK Government recently launched the Curriculum and Assessment Review to “review the existing national curriculum and assessment system, including qualification pathways to ensure they are fit for purpose and meeting the needs of children and young people”. The review will be chaired by Professor Becky Francis CBE, an expert in educational policy, including curriculum and social inequality, with an interim report to be published in 2025.

The Government has said that the purpose of the review is to ensure that the curriculum appropriately balances ambition, excellence, relevance, flexibility and inclusivity for all children and young people and seeks to deliver the following:

an excellent foundation in core subjects of reading, writing and maths;
a broader curriculum, with improved access to music, art, sport and drama, as well as vocational subjects;
a curriculum that ensures children and young people leave compulsory education ready for life and ready for work;
a curriculum that reflects the issues and diversities of our society, ensuring all children and young people are represented; and
an assessment system that captures:
- the strengths of every child and young person; and
- the breadth of the curriculum.

Following the review, all state schools, including academies, will be required to teach the national curriculum. Although independent schools will remain exempt from this requirement, many independent schools opt to follow the national curriculum in full or use it as a guiding framework and so the review will be of interest.

Runnymede Trust’s response to the review

Britain’s leading independent racial justice think tank, Runnymede Trust, published a response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review setting out key recommendations for schools. We have highlighted some of these below:

Anti-racist policies: Schools should implement clear anti-racist policies to address student racism and institutional commitment to anti-racism.
Curriculum: The Department for Education should follow recent reforms in Wales to embed statutory topics on race, migration, and the British Empire into the National Curriculum, supported by high-quality resources and teaching materials. Teachers should be given access to more diverse and inclusive content across curricula to promote students’ understanding of their place in Britain, of Britain’s place in the wider world, and also to promoting tolerance in schools and society as a whole.
Bridging academic gaps: There is a need to bridge the gap between academic research on Britain’s diverse past and history taught in schools, which continues to be narrated in narrow terms.
Creative subjects: The Department of Education should recognise and promote the value and importance of creative subjects alongside (and not in opposition to) STEM in the curriculum.
Diverse teaching workforce: The teaching workforce is still overwhelmingly white, particularly in senior leadership roles, and there is a need to increase the proportion of teachers from minoritised ethnic backgrounds.
Racial literacy: Make racial literacy and anti-racism a key competency for teachers, understanding racism as structural, institutional and interpersonal. As part of this, teachers should have specific training on how to talk about race and racism with pupils.
Training and accreditation: Establish formal training and accreditation for Initial Teacher Education professionals and mentors on anti-racism, inclusion, and diversity.
Collaboration with experts: Expand opportunities for trainee teachers to collaborate with history subject experts and access recent scholarship.

The report emphasises the need for a more inclusive and representative education system. In particular, there is a need to address systemic inequalities within the education system such as the disparity in access to resources, disproportionate sanctions, marginalising the contributions of Black and minoritised ethnic communities, and underrepresentation of minoritised ethnic teaching staff. The report aims to address these inequalities by making recommendations to acknowledge the contributions and experiences of Black and minoritised ethnic communities, as well as addressing the historical and contemporary issues of race, migration, and the British Empire. By doing so, the curriculum can help foster a more inclusive and understanding society where all students feel seen and valued.

As before, the content of the school curriculum is not caught by the Equality Act 2010 (EqA 2010), however, the way in which a school provides education – the delivery of the curriculum – remains covered by the EqA 2010. Schools will need to continue to ensure that the way in which issues are taught does not subject individual pupils to discrimination.

It is yet to be seen what recommendations will be made by the Government, and these will be outlined in their interim report in 2025.

With many thanks to Heeteshini Mohungroo, a legal assistant in the Employment team, for her help in preparing this article.