Bacc to the future - or a step backwards?

LOSING contestants on the popular quiz show “Bullseye “were met with the dreaded words here’s what you would have won” as a car or speedboat was wheeled out.

Now secondary schools have been told what they could have achieved if the English baccalaureate qualification had been introduced last year.

But many head teachers are unhappy the Government included the information in this year’s GCSE league tables. Reporter Karen Doherty finds out more.


EVERY few years “new-look” league tables are unveiled to measure how well schools are performing.

For some time the gold standard has been the number of pupils achieving five A* to C GCSE grades including English and maths.

Now the Coalition Government has been accused of moving the goal posts after retrospectively introducing a new measure in this month’s league tables.

The English baccalaureate aims to address concerns that the current system encourages schools to offer “soft subjects” to boost their performance at the expense of ensuring pupils receive a rounded education.

The E bacc will be available from 2013 for pupils who achieve five top grades in English, maths, a humanity, a language and either two separate sciences or the combined double science exam.

But there are concerns that this is narrowing the curriculum for the most able and those who thrive on practical learning alike.

Only history and geography count as humanities, omitting subjects such as religious education, sociology and economics. Others subject areas missing include art, music, PE and information communication technology (ICT).

BTECs, which are equivalent to several GCSEs, are not included and there are questions about the sense of including biblical Hebrew and ancient Latin and Greek in the languages section.

Despite this, education secretary Michael Gove decided to publish data from last year’s exams showing the percentage of pupils who would have made the grade.

Only four Oldham schools made it into double figures: Hulme, Blue Coat, Saddleworth and Crompton House.

At Counthill (now Waterhead Academy), Radclyffe, Royton and Crompton and Radclyffe no pupils would have achieved the qualification.

Radclyffe head teacher Hardial Hayer said: “I have no issues with a set of qualifications such as English, maths and science. To add anything else after that takes away from the personalisation agenda that the Government is always pushing.

“If you say to children that everybody needs to do the E bacc, they haven’t got the opportunity to study other subjects.

“For example, an A* GCSE in ICT is not included in the E bacc. In the modern world, some would say that’s a better qualification to have than a GCSE in Greek or Latin.

“As far as I am concerned, every single qualification is valuable. To put an emphasis on some qualifications at the expense of others doesn’t seem to make a great deal of sense and they are not relevant to every single child.

“The E bacc just seems to be a random whim of an education minister. I could come up with other subjects which are equally as valuable.”

Mr Hayer said the E bacc figures were meaningless and likened their publication in the league tables to changing the rules of football mid-season.

Schools will now have to consider whether to change their curriculum to meet the target in future — which will take a lot of planning — and Mr Hayer added: “We are not going to make any big changes. We do not know who the minister will be in 12 months!

“The E bacc is not a statutory requirement at the moment. We will always do what is the minimum statutory requirement and then we will do what is right for the students.

“The curriculum is the most important thing we do in terms of teaching the learning. We just had an Ofsted report in which our curriculum as described as outstanding.”

Criticism has also come from schools at the top of the E bacc table in Oldham.

Hulme Grammar Schools is ranked first and principal Dr Paul Neeson said: “It will narrow the curriculum.

“If state schools are being judged against narrow criteria, a list of subjects, they are going to concentrate on those subject areas.

“Things like classics and RE aren’t counted as humanities. History, ancient history and geography are the only ones counted.

“Where is art, where is music, where is design technology? That’s not a broad education.”

He said that studying a foreign language may not be appropriate for some children, for example if they are dyslexic.

Jim Upton, deputy head teacher at Crompton House, added: “When children have got RE as a compulsory subject, as in a church school, it doesn’t count as a humanities subject. That makes quite a difference to our E bacc figures.”