Curriculum Review: The case for broadening - not abolishing - EBacc

What is working in the curriculum and assessment system in England - and what isn’t? This week, the interim findings from the Curriculum and Assessment Review were released. The review board know getting this right won’t be easy. Reforms, they stress, must avoid “perverse incentives or unintended consequences”.

There is much to commend in the report. Staying true to their promise of “evolution, not revolution”, the review board argues for improving – not dismantling – the current system. They highlight the need to maintain momentum where progress has been made and to avoid further strain on already overstretched workforce.

A major finding is inequality. Access to arts and creative subjects for disadvantaged pupils - as the British Academy made clear in our own response - is singled out as a key area for improvement. There is a careful, nuanced look at curriculum overload and the volume of assessment at GCSE, with a welcome commitment to rigorous subject-specific follow-up.

Ultimately, the goal must be delivering a broad, balanced and effective curriculum for all pupils – not just the most advantaged.

It's a welcome and worthy goal. But some of the proposed solutions risk undermining it. Perhaps the most contentious finding is the future of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc).

First introduced in 2010, the EBacc is a performance measure that tracks how many students enrol in a broad set of core GCSE subjects including maths, English language and literature, and double or triple science. It also includes humanities subjects: history or geography, plus an ancient or modern language.

But the review board argues that the EBacc may now be a barrier to a broad and balanced curriculum. Prescribing core subjects, they suggest, squeezes out non-EBacc options. Arts subjects are singled out as major casualties. Vocational subjects (broadly-defined), triple science and computing also get a mention.

Few could claim the EBacc has been a success on take-up alone. Most schools perform poorly against it, with language entry a key issue: just 44% of pupils took a language GCSE in 2024. With many schools facing ongoing recruitment and retention challenges in language teaching, EBacc is often a better measure of a school’s ability to provide languages rather than teaching quality or student choice.

Would removing EBacc increase access to arts and other subjects? It’s not clear that it would. EBacc was not introduced solely to deliver curricular breadth – in recent years it has formed part a wider government drive to raise standards by introducing greater ‘rigour’ into the system, a controversial policy shift.

But policies have consequences – intended or not. By mandating a set of core subjects, EBacc has quietly reinforced the importance of breadth at Key Stage 4. The inclusion of humanities subjects in EBacc sent a strong signal about their importance. Young people deserve access to these subjects: schools need incentives and support to provide them.

For languages, the stakes are even higher. Despite workforce shortages and concerns about grading severity, EBacc remains one of the key drivers for schools to offer GCSE languages. Without new incentives and action to tackle these broader challenges, there is a real risk that removing EBacc, or making current core subjects optional, may accelerate the decline in languages take-up, widening inequalities in access and creating new barriers to vital linguistic and cultural skills.

It is not in students’ interest to pit different subjects against each other. The requirement to study a humanities subject for EBacc is not the main reason creative subjects are squeezed out. Other factors - curriculum overload, pressure from high-stakes assessment in maths and English, reductions in per-pupil funding, and limited access to wider creative opportunities - all play a part. Young people deserve to study the arts alongside other subjects, not instead of them.

One solution: Broaden EBacc to include arts subjects. The review board is cautious to make more subjects compulsory, citing student choice. But in a truly broad and balanced curriculum, choice wouldn’t mean trade-offs - instead of a choice of some subjects, students would benefit from all. In the spirit of ‘evolution, not revolution’, then, there may be a case for refining current policy, not discarding it.

There are no easy answers. But we hope for further opportunity to work with the review board on these complex issues. After all, we share a common goal: ensuring all young people experience a rich, rewarding curriculum that sets them up to thrive.