Commenting on statistics released today by the Department for
Education for 2017/18, Nansi Ellis, Assistant
General Secretary of the National Education Union, said:
“Today’s results show EBacc entries continuing to plateau,
confirming that the Department for Education must abandon the
delusional expectation that 90% of young people will take it.
Teachers and leaders, who know their students better than
ministers ever could, continue to reject the policy.
“Since 2010 too many young people have been pushed on to
inappropriate subject pathways and denied the opportunity to
thrive in other valuable and challenging subjects. The EBacc
policy is squeezing subjects such as Art, Music, Technology and
Drama out of the curriculum, and must be stopped.
“The statistical release includes data on the grade 5 ‘strong
pass’ or above in English and maths. The strong pass applies to
school performance measures, rather than what a student needs to
achieve to pass: grade 4. The introduction of the standard
pass/strong pass is a confused and confusing measure that
conflates students’ grades with school accountability measures in
ways that are disheartening to students.
“And research shows that the accountability measures used to
create the league tables published by the DfE are not fit for
purpose – they are not an accurate or reliable indicator of
school effectiveness. Schools and colleges are worth so much more
than data alone can ever demonstrate and as such league tables
based purely on data will never, with any tweaking, be able to
define or measure a provider. The DfE should stop using
accountability measures in this flawed, damaging and inaccurate
way.”
