This blog post is not just an opinion piece but also, I hope, a reasoned argument about the curriculum, and for the introduction of a ‘true’ Baccalaureate into the English Education System – with all the implications this has, not just for the 16-19 phase, but for the system as a whole. A more detailed account of this argument is available in my edited book, On Learning: volume 2, Philosophy, Concepts and Practices, which is free to download at UCL Press.
The call for England to adopt a broader curriculum for the 16-19 phase is one that has surfaced intermittently. It is echoed in the government’s plans to introduce an ‘Advanced British Standard’, incorporating ‘Maths to 18’ and the combining of academic and vocational elements. I will take as my starting point, however, the recent Times Commission on Education, which produced its final report in June 2022, making forty-five recommendations for reforming the English Education System in its entirety. I do so because it neatly illustrates the place for more considered reflection on the underpinning principles for a ‘British Baccalaureate’ (or an ‘Advanced British Standard’) and the surrounding phases.
The Commission’s recommendations ranged from the banal – ‘Every primary school should have a library’ (perhaps this should be every primary classroom should have a library, which the vast majority do anyway) – to the interesting but undeveloped – ‘A British Baccalaureate at 18’ is recommended, this would be ‘an equally rigorous but broader qualification than ‘A’ levels with academic and vocational options under the same umbrella’. What is missing from this Report and its recommendations, though, are: a coherent theory of learning; an in-depth understanding of educative processes (as opposed to training processes); a theory of curriculum that is based on a real understanding of how we learn (children and adults); and a sense of coherence and consistency. On the latter, for example, recommendation 16 referring to the need for a British Baccalaureate, which has some holistic elements, is in conflict with recommendation 17, which suggests that ‘at sixteen pupils should take a slimmed-down set of exams in five core subjects …’, which seems to be in denial of some fundamental Baccalaureate principles, such as holism, breadth, Bildung, coherence, solidarity, comprehensiveness and liberality (as in a liberal education).
