The Curriculum Review - a bit of old and a bit of new

The Curriculum and Assessment Review Final Report was issued on 5^th November 2025. On page 87 there’s this table:

• Study of a foreign language, either modern or ancient, is compulsory at Key Stage 2. Study of a Modern Foreign Language (MFL) is compulsory at Key Stage 3.

• At Key Stage 4, there is an entitlement to study an MFL GCSE. Take-up in any MFL GCSE was 43% in 2009/10 and 44% in 2024/25.

  •        GCSE French take-up was 25% in 2009/10 and 18% in 2024/25.

  •        GCSE German take-up was 10% in 2009/10 and 5% in 2024/25.

  •        GCSE Spanish take-up was 9% in 2009/10 and 19% in 2024/25.

• In 2024/25, 75% of state-funded schools had GCSE entries in French, 32% in German and 74% in Spanish.

• GCSE Classical Greek and GCSE Biblical Hebrew take-up is consistently less than 1%. GCSE Latin take-up was 1% in 2012/13 and 1% in 2024/25. In 2024/25, 1% of state-funded schools had GCSE entries in Classical Greek or Biblical Hebrew; 7% had entries in GCSE Latin.

• A Level French entries made up 2% of A Level entries in 2009/10 and 1% in 2023/24. A Level Spanish entries made up 1% of A Level entries in 2009/10 and 1% in 2023/24. A Level German entries made up 0.6% of A Level entries in 2009/10 and 0.3% in 2023/24.

  
  

Disappointingly, that’s the only brief mention of classics education - the KS2 requirement to teach a modern or ancient language. The feedback and recommendations were all about modern languages, including the lack of connection between languages learnt at primary and secondary. An example was given of successful implementation by Hackney Local Authority (in London) where Spanish had been largely agreed as being the common modern language in primary and secondary schools. This was said with approval, although the drop-off of French and German was noted with some sorrow. Maybe, the Review went on, Multi-Academy Trusts might have a future in following something similar – but the DFE did not want to force this joined-up thinking, possibly because of the shortfall of teachers which might be caused by it, and also the realisation that MATs occupied schools over a much wider geographical spread and did not necessarily cover all primary schools in an area with different and competing academies, each with their own modern languages departments and curricula decisions and traditions.

No mention of Latin here as a possible language that provides a foundation for all modern languages offered – a kind of multi-use language that fits with everything. Best not to mention Latin – that was (whisper it quietly) a Gove-inspiration. On the other hand, we might be glad to see that Latin (or, for that matter, ancient Greek) haven’t been taken out of KS2. Not yet.

This despite – look it up in that table – 7% of state schools entering students for Latin GCSE. That’s not a SMALL number. My studies of the exam entry statistics for 2024 suggest that represents over 280 state schools. That isn't a small number either.

The report confirms that the EBacc should go. That will stop the restriction on subjects which will count for Progress 8. The original idea was that the EBacc would promote the sorts of academic subjects which were said to lead students of all backgrounds towards the A levels which the research-intensive universities (the so-called ‘Russell Group’) preferred. But while the EBacc was heavily promoted as a means to persuade students to take modern languages and triple science, as well as a humanity and maths and English, it never really achieved that. Conservative Education Minister Nick Gibb’s idea that 90% of students would take the EBacc subjects was never realised, with only around 40% of students taking a modern language at GCSE. The usual newspapers cried out that the Government was dumbing down the curriculum. These claims were countered by subject experts. The British Academy issued a warning that the removal of the EBacc might have dire consequences for take up of modern languages. Meanwhile, art, music, drama, design and the other non-EBacc subjects had already declined and it was said that students were being pushed into subject areas which did not suit their interests. With the change in heart, a new problem arose: where would the teachers come from for the new entitlement for Triple Science? The reality was that teacher recruitment and retention were still huge problems. And it is likely to get worse for modern languages when several of our universities are closing their languages departments down. While (thanks to Gove) being on the EBacc list may have protected or supported Latin, Ancient Greek and Ancient History, the decline in numbers of the those taking those languages did not seem to suggest that it really did offer much protection. And without the standard EBacc, it is not clear at present how Progress 8 will work, with the Review saying one thing and the Department for Education at odds.  Schools Week did try to show how it could be created from a new set of subject ‘buckets’.

Despite the rise in the number of those taking Ancient History and Classical Civilisation (the former being on the original EBacc list), there was no mention of these subjects at all, as reported in the Classical Association’s review of the Report.

There were other features in the Report which, while not directly affecting Classics Education, will impact on the provision of subjects in schools and will cause the Department for Education to look elsewhere than us. We are very close to the bottom of the list, I suspect.

Nevertheless, we might look at some of the points it made and see if they apply to our current thinking in the various qualifications reviews that the CATB has set up. AT KS2 English Language, the Review found that too much time was spent in preparing students for the SATs examinations on esoteric and frankly obscure terminology – spotting such things as ‘fronted adverbials’ and the like – rather than using their time better in actually developing their writing through drafting and redrafting and writing for different audiences (for example). There is something of an echo in the resources that are commonly in use at KS2 in Latin etymology courses, I feel, where knowledge about something displaces knowledge what to do with it. The same could be said for some of the teaching of ancient languages further up the scale too….

The Review wants to reduce the number and length of examinations at GCSE by ‘10%’. This chimes with our subject association’s view that we ask too much of students at this level and questioning for questions’ sake is something being looked at.

The Review comes down strongly on continuing the previous government’s focus on a ‘knowledge rich’ curriculum – Young’s idea of the essential disciplinary knowledge that subjects require rather more sophisticated than the Hirsch idea of a collection of pieces of knowledge that make up cultural literacy. As a subject group we might want to consider what are the substantive pieces of knowledge we want and how we might teach them. And then exams follow that. Rather than start with the exam and build books which deliver it.

The Department for Education also has let it be known that it wants a new language exam (not a GCSE), a new Year 8 reading test, and a computing GCSE. For the language exam, it seems to be thinking of a stepped exam which shows a student’s proficiency over time – rather, I think, like music exams with different graded sections. In Classics Education we have something like that, with the entry level or level 1 exams in Latin, and the ICCG in Greek – although these are separate exams and not part of a ‘ladder of proficiency’ by design. We might well think along these lines - it always seems unfair to me that our GCSEs and A levels are predicated on the idea that all students receive equal amounts of time to prepare for them when the truth is anything but. A ladder of qualifications might show that there was something to be gained at each stage of learning, which steadily accrued over the time that was actually available. If we are not going to be given protected time in the National Curriculum, we need to stop pretending that we are like other GCSE and A level subjects and design a set of qualifications - and advocate for them - which properly represent the teaching allocation. The Royal Society recommends a Baccalaureate model overall – like the IB – with each part contributing to the whole. I suspect the Department for Education's plans will be far from this; but it is what the country needs: not specializing in providing entry qualifications for the minority of students who go to universities, but providing education for all students in a rapidly changing world. That means a broader set of qualifications which together add up to an overarching one.

There are few occasions when I agree with him, but Simon Jenkins of the Guardian newspaper has got it right: ‘The only gaping hole in the report is its final preference for ‘evolution not revolution’. Its stress on citizenship, computing and creativity demands much school time. Yet it offers hardly any. It lacks the guts to abolish GSCEs and it preserves narrow A-levels in a capitulation to university specialism. All it can suggest is a mere 10% cut in hours devoted to exams. That will not do. As long as British schoolchildren remain shackled and enslaved to exams, all other reform will be meaningless.’

There is a lot of tinkering round the edges. Opportunities for curriculum and assessment reform come round maybe every twenty years. I fear that we have fluffed it.