Commenting on the National Foundation for Educational Research
(NFER) report which finds that post-16 students are studying a
narrower range of subjects than 20 years ago, Pepe Di'Iasio,
General Secretary of the Association of School and College
Leaders, said:
“Some pretty poor decisions were made by the last government
which have resulted in a narrowing of the curriculum in post-16
education. Virtually everybody warned them against decoupling
AS-levels from A-levels and yet they went ahead and did it
regardless. This has resulted in students generally taking three
rather than four subject options.
“The previous government's introduction of the English
Baccalaureate favouring a particular set of academic subjects at
GCSE has also led to a decline in entries to other subjects which
has a knock-on effect in post-16.
“And this has all been compounded by teacher and funding
shortages which have made it harder to preserve courses with
smaller cohorts.
“In addition, the previous government's plan to scrap BTECs and
similar qualifications will make matters worse and we very much
hope the new government will reverse that decision.
“We have to get the balance right between specialisation at
post-16 and maintaining a reasonable breadth of study and options
for the future, and that balance isn't quite right at present.
“The new government's curriculum and assessment review will need
to consider how to address that – and getting rid of the English
Baccalaureate would be a good start.”
